Many maintain Sandy Berger...

**j2k4** · 12-20-2006, 10:34 PM

...did nothing wrong.

Something is fishy...

nspector General Says Former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger Hid Classified Documents Under a Trailer

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

WASHINGTON — Former national security adviser Sandy Berger removed classified documents from the National Archives in 2003 and hid them under a construction trailer, the Archives inspector general reported Wednesday.

The report was issued more than a year after Berger pleaded guilty and received a criminal sentence for removal of the documents.

Inspector General Paul Brachfeld reported that when Berger was confronted by Archives officials about the missing documents, he said it was possible he threw them in his office trash.

The report said that when Archives employees first suspected that Berger — who had been President Clinton's national security adviser — was removing classified documents from the Archives in the fall of 2003, they failed to notify any law enforcement agency.

Berger, who pleaded guilty to unlawfully removing and retaining classified documents, was fined $50,000, ordered to perform 100 hours of community service and was barred from access to classified material for three years.

The report said that when Berger was reviewing the classified documents in the Archives building a few blocks from the Capitol, employees saw him bending down and fiddling with something white, which could have been paper, around his ankle.

However, Archives employees did not feel at the time there was enough information to confront someone of Berger's stature, the report said.

Brachfeld reported that on one visit, Berger took a break to go outside without an escort.

"In total, during this visit, he removed four documents ... .

"Mr. Berger said he placed the documents under a trailer in an accessible construction area outside Archives .1 (the main Archives building)."

Berger acknowledged that he later retrieved the documents from the construction area and returned with them to his office.

Berger, with the authorization of former President Clinton, was reviewing National Security Council documents on Usama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, Sudan, and related presidential correspondence. The review was to facilitate Berger's impending testimony before the House and Senate intelligence committees.

**bigboab** · 12-21-2006, 08:53 AM

Where do you do Community Service in the USA? The Senate or Congress?

**j2k4** · 12-21-2006, 10:48 AM

Originally Posted by bigboab

Where do you do Community Service in the USA? The Senate or Congress?

Ex-Clinton administration officials do their community service under Bill's desk, as always.

**j2k4** · 12-22-2006, 12:56 AM

Actually, Berger's offense alone puts the sum total of any offenses committed by the Bush administration in the shade.

Just think:

He made off with all copies extant of several times several documents allegedly having to do with the Clinton administration's (lack of) actions/interactions/reactions as regards terrorist activity up to and including the USS Cole incident, right until Clinton left office.

We've recently seen a TV "docu-drama" wherein liberties were apparently taken in depicting the Clinton administration's actions vis a vis Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, which trespass evoked denunciations from across the political spectrum, but again, no real action, legal or otherwise (odd,very odd, for the Clintonite cohort).

The aforementioned "docu-drama" was said to have relied heavily on the report issued by the 9/11 Commission (which report was received very warmly by the Clinton faction.

The report was interpolated with, and extrapolated from, such documentation as was generated during the Clinton years...minus, of course, the documents which were stolen and/or destroyed by Berger during his exploits at the National Archive (which also, coincidentally, occurred while he was being retained by the '04 Kerry campaign in a high advisory capacity).

Keeping in mind that there is no possible way in the world to know precisely what was contained in Berger's thievery, and also having Berger's own statements indicating the documents were germane to the 9/11 Commission's work, I find myself abundantly curious about them...don't you?

For all that, he gets a wee fine and community service.

Scooter Libby, on the other hand...

**Ava Estelle** · 12-22-2006, 04:59 AM

Originally Posted by j2k4

Actually, Berger's offense alone puts the sum total of any offenses committed by the Bush administration in the shade.

Is this the same Bush administration that had decided to invade Iraq even before 9\11?

The same administration who fabricated evidence of WMD in order to carry this out?

The same administration who illegally attacked another country, causing tens of thousands of innocent civilian lives, and thousands of dead troops?

The same administration that has destabilised the whole Middle East, and brought the area to the brink of conflict and civil war?

The same administration that has made the world a more dangerous place to live?

When history judges this administration as the worst ever, I hope their apologists are tarred with the same brush.