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Speaker Hastert on Congressional Investigation Regarding National Security and Sandy Berger7/21/2004 6:20:00 PM To: National Desk Contact: John Feehery or Pete Jeffries, 202-225-2800, both of the Office of Speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert WASHINGTON, July 21 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) today made the following statement: "Like many Americans concerned about our national security, I look forward to learning more from the House Government Reform Committee's investigation into the wayward actions by Sandy Berger. The American people deserve to know why Mr. Berger apparently skirted the law and removed highly classified...

What do some of the craziest events in recent American History all have in common? No, this is not another Blue Dress story, but it is about the biggest crime Bill Clinton committed as president. It was such a small political lie for him but it turned out to have incredible ramifications to our country. Slick Willy may be headed for the title of worst president in United States history, in fact, he might even qualify for the biggest traitor label. And further more, you don’t even suspect it happened. Just what was Sandy Berger doing stuffing documents into his...

Berger Says He Bungled, But Pundits Believe Berger Burgled Conservatives Say Sticky-Fingered Clinton Official's Story Doesn't Wash By Bill Fancher and Jenni Parker July 21, 2004 (AgapePress) - The admission that Clinton administration National Security Advisor Sandy Berger took papers on the Clinton handling of terrorism from the National Archives and then lost them has Capitol Hill scrambling for explanations. Berger, who has been an advisor to presidential candidate John Kerry on foreign policy issues, recently confirmed that he is under criminal investigation for taking documents pertaining to terrorism from a secure reading room at the National Archives. Yesterday Berger...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrat John Kerry (news - web sites)'s presidential campaign accused the Bush White House on Wednesday of disclosing the existence of a criminal investigation against former national security adviser Sandy Berger for political advantage. The objective of such a leak, the Kerry campaign said in a political memo distributed by email, was to take attention away from a report to be issued on Thursday by the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The criminal investigation of Berger began last October but only came to light this week. "The timing of this leak suggests that the White...

Photograph by: Diana Walker, 1999 Secretary of Defense William Cohen, President Clinton, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and National Security Advisor Sandy Berger hear, see and speak no evil. Diana Walker: This is to show you that not everything is serious at the White House. This is one of those behind-the-scenes pictures that you could—you could never get this picture in an open photo op. It just would never happen. And I was on assignment photographing Secretary Albright just prior to her trip to Bosnia. And, the President and Mrs. Albright were in a holding room at the NATO...

The woman who wrote the definitive book on a Middle Eastern connection to the Oklahoma City bombing says the classified terror-threat report at the center of a criminal investigation of former Clinton aide Sandy Berger might include information about a high-level al-Qaida operative having visited OKC ahead of the 1995 attack on the Murrah Federal Building. As WorldNetDaily reported, Berger removed handwritten notes and secret documents from a National Archives reading room prior to his testimony before the 9-11 Commission. One of the documents was the draft of an after-action report he ordered his anti-terror czar, Richard Clarke, to write...

The classified reading room is on the 6th floor of the National Archives at College Park complex - the world's largest and most advanced archival facility in the world. The records vaults (each larger than most people's homes) for classified docs are also on that floor, as are the offices for the archivists and technicians who handle them. Employees can go up to that floor, but once there, everything is super-secured. You can't get out of the hall without the proper clearance and magnetic access badge that doubles as your ID badge. At the time, I had a Secret-level...

Kerry Adviser Sandy Berger Sees Potential 3 Year Force Presence in Iraq WASHINGTON, Jul. 09, 04 /PRNewswire/ -- WASHINGTON, July 9 /PRNewswire/ -- In a wide-ranging and exclusive interview with Bisnow on Business released today, former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, now a chief foreign policy adviser to Senator John Kerry, says, in answer to a question about how long a "substantial U.S. force presence" might remain in Iraq: "I can certainly imagine us having a force there in three years. I hope it will be a smaller force." In answer to a question about whether the U.S. is better...

Serious: Theft of Papers Showing Al-Qaeda in US Under Clinton is HUGE July 20, 2004 Listen to Rush…(...explain just how serious the Sandy Berger document theft is) BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: President Clinton's national security advisor Sandy Burglar is the focus of a justice department investigation. Do you know this has been going on? This was first discovered last October, and the investigation has been going on. I mean, this thing, the pilferage (story) of these classified docs, happened last October and the investigation has been going on since the end of January. The 9/11 commission leaked this. This is...

CLINTON AIDE ACCIDENTALLY TAKES 9/11 DOCS, NOTES, JOLLY RANCHERS Former Clinton Administration National Security Advisor Sandy Berger admitted 'inadvertantly' stuffing highly classified documents and notes into his pants, absent-mindedly removing them from the national archives on five occasions, accidentally mailing them to DNC Chair Terry McAuliffe, who mistakenly buried them in the World Trade Center excavation site. According to FBI sources, Berger also stopped off at a Bethesda, MD Chevron FoodMart, where he inadvertantly stuffed his pants with three bags of Jolly Ranchers, a 24-pack of Bud Lite, a copy of Maxim magazine, and Listerine Pocket Mints before driving off...

Clinton’s Former Aide Drops Windfall in the Lap of Bush Campaign DEBKAfile Special Report from Washington July 20, 2004, 2:35 PM (GMT+02:00) Former president Bill Clinton’s national security adviser, Sandy Berger, is under criminal investigation and subject to FBI searches of his home and his office since he was caught – probably by hidden cameras – purloining copies of highly classified terrorism documents and his own handwritten notes from a secure reading room at the National Archives in Washington. This event took place, according to the Associated Press, during preparations to testify at the Sept. 11 commission hearings after Clinton...

John Kerry Unveils Comprehensive Plan to Fight the War on Terrorism <![if !vml]><![endif]>February 27, 2004 For Immediate Release Los Angeles, CA – In a speech today at the UCLA International Institute, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry offered his comprehensive approach to fighting the global war on terrorism. In the second of a series of speeches on national security, Kerry presented a plan to identify, disrupt, and eliminate terrorist networks using all the resources at our disposal. As CIA Director George Tenet starkly reminded us this week, we are threatened by a far-flung terrorist network that will continue to operate...

WASHINGTON, July 20 — The political fallout continued today over revelations that President Clinton's national security advisor, Samuel R. Berger, removed classified national security documents from the National Archives while vetting them in preparation for testimony before the Sept. 11 commission. Mr. Berger inadvertently removed at least two slightly different versions of a memo critiquing how the government handled national intelligence and security issues before the millennium celebration in December 1999, as well as personal notes he had taken on classified documents, one of Mr. Berger's lawyers, Lanny Breuer, said Monday night.

Have you noticed the consistent media spin about the theft of the confidential documents by former Clinton National Security Advisor Sandy Berger -- "It's the timing of the leak that's curious" -- not the fact that Berger engaged in illegal conduct they may invovle Clinton or Kerry. I have now heard this spin on CNN radio, Fox News and, of course, the Today Show. If Berger had been a Republican, do you think the media would give a rats a@@ abouth the "timing of the disclosure?"

The FBI searches occurred after National Archives employees reported they saw Berger place documents in his jacket and pants...AS A TEENAGER MY ADDICTION TO SCIENCE FICTION PAPERBACKS often came into conflict with my ongoing cash-flow problem. To wit, I hadn't any. But, for a few brief, shining weeks I did discover a resource better than cash for acquiring science-fiction paperbacks -- my pants. Yes, at some point it dawned on my tiny teenage brain that, if I could just get these piles of paper down the front of my pants and walk without a waddle out the door of the...

Beyond the obvious, I've given this matter some thought and a few questions have occurred to me. These are (1) why are former NSA's or administration officials allowed to keep clearances to see "classified" materials, shouldn't they be stripped of this once they leave office? We've heard that the reason Berger was at the NA was to sift through documents for the 911 commission, why him? Why not a member of the current administration e.g. Condi Rice? (2) the Democrats and their allies in the media are howling over the "timing" of this but what concerns me more is that...

Deputy Attorney General James Comey raised the specter of a jail sentence yesterday for Clinton National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, if he's found guilty of removing top secret documents from the National Archives that were supposed to go to the 9/11 Commission. Though Comey's comments were widely quoted, the U.S. press edited out his reference to a possible stint in the big house for Berger. A Lexis Nexis search found that only Agence France Press quoted the Deputy AG in full, including this key observation on the Berger security breach: "It's our lifeblood to keep secrets," Comey told reporters in...

Officials at the National Archives were stunned to learn how much top secret material Clinton National Security Advisor Sandy Berger had purloined from a super-secure reading room set up for the 9/11 Commission probe - when Berger returned documents last fall that they didn't even know he'd taken. "Sources tell us that Archives staff noticed documents missing after one of Mr. Berger's visits," reports Wednesday's Wall Street Journal. "After gently raising the issue with him, they were shocked to have him return other documents they hadn't even noticed missing." The next time Mr. Berger went to the Archives, the documents...

... Mr. Berger admits to having deliberately taken handwritten notes he'd made out of the Archives reading room. On the more serious charges involving the removal (and subsequent discarding) of highly classified documents -- including drafts of a key, after-action memo Mr. Berger had himself ordered on the U.S. response to al Qaeda threats in the run-up to the Millennium -- he maintains he did so "inadvertently." There's only one way to clear away the political smoke: Release all the drafts of the review Mr. Berger took from the room. If it's all as innocent as Mr. Berger's friends are...

This is a continuation of yesterday's thread:AP: Clinton Aide Probed...I'll try to start a new thread each day or at appropriate intervals. Please post links here to articles which add to the story.