Posted on 07/20/2004 6:33:22 AM PDT by foolscap
Sandy Berger Not Front Page News in Some Major Newspapers
(CNSNews.com) - President Clinton's National Security Adviser Sandy Berger - who has been advising the Kerry campaign on foreign policy -- confirms he is the target of a criminal investigation for removing copies of classified terrorism documents from a secure reading room at the National Archives.
Some copies were never returned, press reports said. The documents reportedly discuss the Clinton administration's response to various terror threats.
Berger admits he walked out of the reading room with handwritten notes stuck in his pockets. Copies of classified documents were "inadvertently" removed in a leather portfolio. "I deeply regret the sloppiness involved," Berger said in a statement to the Associated Press on Monday.
The documents in question are said to be critical of the Clinton administration.
But Berger said he had no intention of withholding documents from the 9/11 commission. "To the contrary, to my knowledge, every document requested by the commission from the Clinton administration was produced," Berger said in the statement,
"In the course of reviewing over several days thousands of pages of documents on behalf of the Clinton administration in connection with requests by the Sept. 11 commission, I inadvertently took a few documents from the Archives," Berger said.
"When I was informed by the Archives that there were documents missing, I immediately returned everything I had except for a few documents that I apparently had accidentally discarded," he said.
Timing of leak 'suspicious'
David Gergen, a former adviser to President Clinton, told NBC's Today show on Tuesday that the situation is "more innocent than it looks."
He said Berger would never do anything to compromise national security.
In fact, Gergen called Berger "one of the heroes in the war against terrorism." He said Berger - as the millennium approached - led the effort to prevent a terror attack on the Los Angeles airport and other targets in the U.S. Gergen said Berger successfully thwarted the airport attack.
Gergen admits Berger violated Archive rules by leaving the building with notes on classified documents. But, he added, "It's not a serious violation."
Taking copies of classified documents is also forbidden. But, Gergen noted, the originals were never removed, and the 9/11 commission was never denied access to documents.
Gergen said the investigation of Berger started months ago, and he called it "suspicious" and "questionable" that the story was leaked in the same week that the 9/11 commission plans to release its report on the events and intelligence leading up to the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Gergen said the publicity about Berger has the "overtones" of being a distraction from the 9/11 commission's findings. "Let's let more facts come out," he added.
As for Berger's role in advising Sen. Kerry, Gergen said the revelations may force Berger to distance himself from the soon-to-be Democratic nominee.
"I think a lot depends on how it bounces in the press, what his opponents do to it," Gergen said. "So far it's not been given - The Washington Post played it inside the newspaper, did not play it on their front page today."
But, Gergen added, "If this suddenly becomes a front page story - and there's a lot of whoop-dee-do about it - then there will be some pressure on him to distance himself [from the Kerry campaign]."
The Washington Post played the story at the top of page 2. The New York Times played the story at the bottom of Page 16. USA Today was among the newspapers playing it above the fold on the front page.
Steve Martin
What's with the Washington Times?
If you really want to get the media on stories like this involving theft of secure documents from the archives, we simply have to get David Schippers to appear on Fox News this evening, claiming that he copied all the documents that had been stored in the Ford Building during Clinton's impeachment.
This Bozo was our NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER to another Bozo, Clinton. If he could "inadvertently" discard top secret documents, then this incompetence is at least as criminal as if he deliberately discarded them.
But lets all face facts here gang. He didn't "inadvertently" discard something he stole from a top secret reading room. He purposely destroyed it because it contained damning information. Since it's "top secret" we can't know what it was, but let us assume that if it was important enough to steal and destroy and it had to do with 911, then we can only assume that at some point Clinton had an opportunity to end the future 911 threat, and was too "busy" to be bothered.
First Joe Wilson and now Sandy Berger. Apparently Kerry decided to have his scandals during the campaign in case he lost.
Notice the date of the article.
Mark Levin: This is why Berger stole the documents and 'lost' them
SINCE BERGER IS A KERRY OPERATIVE, THE QUESTION IS: DID THE KERRY CAMPAIGN BENIFIT FROM BERGER'S THEFT OF THE CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION? THE KERRY CAMPAIGN NEEDS TO EXPLAIN!
Or perhaps these documents will indicate near complicitity in a terrorist attack, which would then create a need for martial law and a suspension of the upcoming presidential election....
BS. Anyone who's ever been around classified information knows it is an extremely serious violation. Serious enough for someone like me to spend a long time breaking rocks if I had done it. Geregn is in either an uninformed fool or deliberately lying to play on the ignorance of an uninformed public.
There is pinning and there is lying - this goes way beyond spinning.
I'v never forgiven Gergen for helping Clinton when he was at his lowest point of his presidency. Then I found out that Gergen originally was a Humphrey DemocRAT before he joined the Nixon administration.
"Or perhaps these documents will indicate near complicitity in a terrorist attack, which would then create a need for martial law and a suspension of the upcoming presidential election...."
Yes possibly and I remember much talk about what measures Clintons would go to for them to remain in office. The reaction of the Clintons after the OK bombing blaming it on "righ wing" talk radio let the cat out of the bag as to who they were after.
Reno testified to this at the 9/11 committee meetings. She said his capture was pure luck due totally to the alertness of the border agent. I think someone else from the clinton administration said the same thing but I can't recall who.
Gergen makes me sick.
As NSA chief, Berger knows that every page of every copy of a classified document is numbered, marked, and the document logged as an individual document in its own right, and knows D*MM*D well is is NOT alright to take them. AND that is a FACT.
What is it with these people?
One theory of that explains the theft of documents and the liberal foaming at the mouth with the "Bush Lied" crap is that the Clinton Administration flat out compiled years of fake intel data that supported their polyanna perspective on the world. When 911 came along, the average joe could see there was a massive terrorist network in place designed to kill us, did this plan fall apart.
So making a silk purse out of a sow's ear, they turned their lies and intelligence failures into Bush's. BUT, they have to clean up their tracks just in case there are documents that actually say, "Washington, we have a problem w/ terrorism".
Sometimes with liberals, what they accuse us of doing is what they are actually already guilty of committing.
Let me think.....have other files ever been lost that deal with the Clinton's or Democrats? Let's think...Whitewater files lost then show up on the second floor of the White House, FBI files that were lost and nobody knows how they got to the White House......Sound familiar?
Lawyer speak. What about the documents that weren't requested?
Gergen just lost the last shred of credibility he had with me.
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