AP: Clinton Adviser Probed in Terror Memos [Sandy Berger is the focus of a criminal investigation]

WASHINGTON - President Clinton (news - web sites)'s national security adviser, Sandy Berger, is the focus of a criminal investigation after admitting he removed highly classified terrorism documents from a secure reading room during preparations for the Sept. 11 commission hearings, The Associated Press has learned.

Berger's home and office were searched earlier this year by FBI (news - web sites) agents armed with warrants. Some drafts of a sensitive after-action report on the Clinton administration's handling of al-Qaida terror threats during the December 1999 millennium celebration are still missing.

Berger and his lawyer said Monday night he knowingly removed handwritten notes he had taken from classified anti-terror documents he reviewed at the National Archives by sticking them in his jacket and pants. He also inadvertently took copies of actual classified documents in a leather portfolio, they said.

"I deeply regret the sloppiness involved, but I had no intention of withholding documents from the commission, and to the contrary, to my knowledge, every document requested by the commission from the Clinton administration was produced," Berger said in a statement to the AP.

Berger served as Clinton's national security adviser for all of the president's second term and most recently has been informally advising Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (news - web sites). Clinton asked Berger last year to review and select the administration documents that would be turned over to the commission.

The FBI searched Berger's home and office with warrants earlier this year after employees of the National Archives told agents they believed they witnessed Berger put documents into his clothing while reviewing sensitive Clinton administration papers, officials said.

When asked, Berger said he returned some of the classified documents, which he found in his office, and all of the handwritten notes he had taken from the secure room, but said he could not locate two or three copies of the highly classified millennium terror report.

Whitewater: Bruce Lindsey, is named by the prosecution as an unindicted co-conspirator

Bruce Lindsey is the deputy White House counsel and a longtime friend and adviser to President Clinton. He was the treasurer for then Governor Clinton's 1990 reelection campaign. It is that association which interests prosecutors in the current Whitewater-related trial in Little Rock.

This case involves two owners of a small town Arkansas bank, Perry County Bank. Their names are Herby Branscum, Jr. and Robert Hill. And Mr. Branscum at least is an old friend and political supporter of the President. The basic charge is that they did various illegal activities to support then Gov. Clinton's reelection campaign in Arkansas in 1990, and the allegations are in particular that they withdrew more than $13,000, misapplied their own bank's funds to funnel them to the Clinton reelection campaign, and that they conspired to conceal from the Internal Revenue Service more than $50,000 in cash withdrawals by the Clinton Reelection Campaign.

the prosecution has claimed that Bruce Lindsey took some of the cash withdrawals. He was the treasurer of the 1990 Clinton campaign. The prosecution has said and he has acknowledged that in May and November 1990, he received large cash withdrawals totaling more than $50,000, received them in person in one case and arranged them in another case from the Perry County Bank for what they call get out the vote money. And the allegation against these defendants is that they conspired to conceal this from the IRS because any time you withdraw more than $10,000 in cash from any bank for any purpose, you're supposed to file a currency transaction report with the Internal Revenue Service. That was not done here. The claim against Mr. Hill and Mr. Branscum is that they conspired not to do it for an illegal purpose, and if Mr. Lindsey is named as an unindicted co-conspirator, the prosecution is essentially saying he was in on the conspiracy too.

Neil Ainley, who had been president of the bank, he's now the star witness against Branscum and Hill, he will probably say Bruce Lindsey told me not to report this to the Internal Revenue Service, the purpose of introducing such evidence at this trial would be to show that there was a broader conspiracy for purposes of trying to convict Mr. Hill and Mr. Branscum of being part of it.

Mr. Lindsey has admitted that he asked the bank to break it into four $7500 checks in one case instead of a single $30,000 check. He has said--and that has drawn the prosecution's suspicion. Why would you do that? You're trying to avoid the $10,000 limitation. This is called structuring transactions if you do it for the purpose of not reporting it. Mr. Lindsey has said that was not his purpose, that he had no reason to try and hide this from the IRS, that, in fact, he publicly reported this contribution in campaign filings later. He said his reason for the four $7500 amounts was to try and make sure that some bank clerk somewhere didn't tell the newspapers and they get a big story in the newspaper about $30,000 in cash being pulled out by the Clinton campaign for gosh knows what purpose.

The then governor in December 1990, just after he'd been reelected as governor, $7,000 in contributions from Mr. Hill, Mr. Branscum, and the prosecution's witness, Mr. Ainley, and at the same meeting, they discussed Mr. Branscum's desire for an appointment to a powerful patronage job on the State Highway Commission, which he subsequently got. And so the problem for the President in this case is partly the prosecution's claiming that his closest adviser, Bruce Lindsey, was part of a criminal conspiracy, if they so claim, and partly the depiction of what looks like a fairly seamy, "you give me the money, I give you the appointment" type of transaction in the governor's office.

The Ubiquitous Mr. Fix-It
By Adam Cohen

(TIME, March 23) -- If you believe Dolly Kyle Browning, who wrote a vanity-press novel about her alleged affair with Bill Clinton, the White House was so eager to keep her quiet that a top aide approached her to cut a deal. In exchange for agreeing not to publicly use the A words (adultery and affair), Browning told Paula Jones' lawyers, the White House promised that Clinton would not tell any untruths about her and she would be permitted to say that she and Clinton had a 33-year relationship that from time to time included sex.

The aide who worked out the deal, Browning says, was White House deputy counsel Bruce Lindsey. Back in Arkansas, it was chief of staff Betsey Wright who quieted the "bimbo eruptions"--a phrase she coined--so the Clinton show could go on. Last week's filings assert that Lindsey has taken on that role in the White House. Independent counsel Ken Starr is so interested in Lindsey that he has called him before the grand jury three times in two months. The relentlessly low-profile Lindsey has always been an enigmatic figure, best known for playing late-night games of hearts with his old pal turned President and lurking just on the edge of White House photo ops. But the picture that emerges in Jones' court papers is of a shrewd Mr. Fix-It, who has been at Clinton's side for several years' worth of eruptions and who has not hesitated to urge that the truth be shaded to make Clinton's problems go away.

Lindsey came to Washington as a Clinton insider. The slightly built, bookish Little Rock lawyer has a corporate middle manager's taste in clothing and a recluse's allergy to the media. But his dry job title and self-effacing manner have largely obscured the pivotal role he has played in the White House for the past six years. Lindsey has been Clinton's friend and traveling companion, as well as his adviser on matters ranging from Whitewater to the campaign-finance investigation. His nicknames have run the gamut from "the Enforcer" to "the Consigliere," the Sicilian word for a trusted counsel to a Mafia chieftain. He is, by most accounts, Clinton's closest confidant apart from the First Lady.

The President's own deposition puts Lindsey in the thick of things. Clinton believes it was Lindsey who first told him Monica Lewinsky might be called as a witness in the Paula Jones case. And he says the first time he recalls seeing Jones herself was on television, and that he said at the time to Lindsey, "Bruce, do we know this lady? Who is this person?" But it is the female witnesses who contend that the Enforcer worked overtime trying to compel a silence about Clinton's past sexual relationships. Lindsey was allegedly in contact with Linda Tripp, his former subordinate, after she saw Kathleen Willey emerge disheveled from an alleged Oval Office sexual encounter. Browning, meanwhile, says that in addition to working out their deal, Lindsey was her White House contact about her relationship with the President, and he was the person she called when she was subpoenaed by Jones. Lindsey, for his part, has maintained a characteristic silence in the face of the charges. This time, it's not entirely his doing: his grand jury testimony two weeks ago was halted when the White House asserted that some of Lindsey's conversations with Clinton were protected by Executive privilege.

"Think this leads right back to the Clintons as deceivers and liars and blackmailers. I think Hillary might be dead in the water."

There is no doubt that it leads to the Clintons, because Clinton asked Berger to do the "research". What surely was not planned for was the notice of the theft and subsequence "search". The thing about the Clintons they have so many usable pawns that are willing to do their dirty work, and thus far few have been required to pay the price.

Now "IF" Hillry is planning to become President the latest out of bjclintons mouth is 2012, then it is not in her best interest for JFKerry and Edwards to even appear electable.

Berger's credibility is history so that leaves JFKerry searching for a new security guy. Hillry never having her name associated with all this "terrorism" prevention will loose nothing even with this news of Berger. Berger willing to steal documents prior to testimony before the Commission is the perfect scapegoat. Think how he can be portrayed by the Clintons.

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