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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 _...

Sandy Berger answers questions in the White House briefing room in this Thursday, March 25, 1999 file photo. Former national security adviser Sandy Berger will plead guilty to taking classified material from the National Archives, a misdemeanor, the Justice Department said Thursday. Berger is expected to appear in federal court in Washington on Friday, said Justice spokesman Bryan Sierra. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds, File) Former Ntl Security Advisor Pleads Guilty to Taking Classified Materials WASHINGTON Apr 1, 2005 — Former national security adviser Sandy Berger, who once had unfettered access to the government's most sensitive secrets, pleaded guilty Friday to sneaking...

WASHINGTON – Sandy Berger, the former national security adviser who pleaded guilty to charges of stealing classified material from the National Archives and lying to federal investigators, now faces an effort to disbar him in the nation's capital. Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates corruption in government, said today it has filed a formal bar complaint against Berger with the Office of Bar Counsel for the District of Columbia Bar. The rules of professional conduct for an attorney in the District of Columbia prohibit a lawyer from committing a criminal act that reflects adversely on trustworthiness; engaging in...

Congress is considering launching its own investigation into the theft of top secret terrorism documents by former Clinton national security advisor Sandy Berger, according to an influential House Republican. "Several committees in Congress are interested in looking into the Berger issue," Peter King told WWRL Radio hosts Steve Malzberg and Karen Hunter on Thursday. The senior New York Republican declined to identify the specific committees, but said any probe would come before Berger was formally sentenced in July. Questions continue to swirl about the five copies of a Millennium bomb plot after-action report stolen by Berger - focusing on why...

A grand jury probing the Sandy Berger Trousergate scandal grilled longtime White House consigliere Bruce Lindsey yesterday – a move that could put Lindsey's former boss, Bill Clinton, in the investigative crosshairs. On Tuesday the New York Post revealed that prosecutors had finally begun probing Berger's removal of top secret documents from the National Archives in preparation for his testimony before the 9/11 Commission last year. But in today's follow-up story reporting Lindsey's interrogation, the paper failed to explain why the Trousergate grand jury has turned to him. The answer: Lindsey and Berger were involved in preparing Clinton for his...

Former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, who remains under investigation for stealing national security secrets from the National Archives while helping ex-President Bill Clinton prepare for his testimony before the 9/11 Commission, has hit the lecture circuit. On Thursday, Oct. 21, Berger will be lecturing on "The Politics of National Security" at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., his alma mater. Berger resigned as national security adviser to John Kerry's presidential campaign in July, after word of the Justice Department investigation document probe leaked to the press. At the time, Deputy Attorney General James Comey predicted that the former Clinton official...

The criminal investigation of former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger – accused of pocketing highly classified terrorism documents prior to the Sept. 11 Commission hearings – has disappeared from media coverage but not from the federal government's agenda. A spokesman from the Department of Justice told WND that a criminal investigation was ongoing, but he would not provide details about the nature or timing of the probe. Berger, who had served as national security adviser to John Kerry's campaign, was reported in July to be under investigation for removing the documents and handwritten notes from a secure reading room at...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 6 - A top House Democrat called on Attorney General John Ashcroft on Friday to explain why the Justice Department was letting federal officials cooperate in a Congressional inquiry into the case of Samuel R. Berger despite a current criminal investigation. The representative, Henry A. Waxman of California, the senior Democrat on the Government Reform Committee, said the department position regarding Mr. Berger, a national security adviser to President Bill Clinton accused of mishandling classified documents, was at odds with how inquiries tied to the Bush administration had been handled. "For example, in the investigation into the leak...

During my time in the Army and on exchange to the State Department I regularly dealt with classified material. At one point, I was assigned to the top-secret Studies and Observation Group in Vietnam and had to sign a paper that disclosure of any details of the organization itself - let alone of its operations - would automatically bring on prison time and a fine. We didn’t have to prick our fingers and sign in blood, but it was close. To comprehend the import of what former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger may have done let’s understand classified material and...

Republicans are filled with glee, as Democrats fall all over themselves, trying to diminish the fact that Bill Clinton's former national security adviser, Sandy Berger, was caught stuffing classified documents and national secrets down his drawers, in his jacket, in his socks, and in a leather portfolio, in order to steal them from the National Archives, and to later destroy some of them. (Berger returned some documents, but only after he was caught, but had "accidentally" destroyed the most important ones.) Note that Berger reportedly burgled the Archives on five separate occasions. Watergate, meet BVDgate. For the past thirty years,...

http://newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/7/25/145748.shtml Millennium Docs Destroyed by Berger Before 9/11 Hearings Most of the existing drafts of the White House's After-Action Millennium Plot Review were stolen from the National Archives and destroyed by former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger at least six months before the Sept. 11 Commission dealt with Millennium issues in interim staff conclusions and public hearings. A chronological review of hearings and staff statement transcripts available on the 9/11 Commission web site shows that the Millennium plot was not covered in any detail until public hearings in March and April 2004, more than six months after the Berger thefts....

Former Clinton adviser shaped policy some believe led to Intifada -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Former National Security Adviser Samuel Berger, who this week admitted to taking classified terrorism documents from the National Archives, also was found in possession of a small number of classified papers containing his handwritten notes from Middle East peace talks during the Clinton administration, according to a source familiar with the investigation. Although the Mideast notes are not the main focus of the current criminal probe, the source says their removal may shed further light on Berger's intentions. The Mideast notes were allegedly taken from the National Archives...

E-mail to Candidate Kerry #10 From James (Cooter) Thompson re: Campaign Strategy and Tactics Dear Senator kerry: Cooter Thompson here, Senator, writing to you again on behalf of the folks down to Daryl's Bait Shop. We think we can do you a world of good by pointing out certain matters of strategy and tactics we've been observing on TV and the Internet. Senator, you really missed the boat—the dock, too—the way you handled the Sandy Berger adventure. Sandy was caught stuffing his pants and his briefcase with topmost secret classified documents from the National Archive. There is no chance of...

Archives Installed Cameras After Berger Took PapersBy ERIC LICHTBLAUPublished: July 24, 2004 ASHINGTON, July 23 - Officials at the National Archives were so concerned about Samuel R. Berger's removal of classified documents last year that they imposed new security measures governing the review of sensitive material, including the installation of full-time surveillance cameras, government officials said Friday.The new policy, issued March 31 to security officers at the archives, lays out toughened steps for safeguarding research rooms used by nongovernmental employees who are given special access to classified material. And it demands "continuous monitoring" of anyone reviewing such material. The restrictions...

Will Justice Indict Berger? Posted Jul 23, 2004 If a bank teller walked out of the vault with a few hundred dollars stuffed in his pants, took the money home, and kept it until the authorities came looking for it, would you believe him if he said it was an accident? Of course not. Would you be surprised if the authorities discovered the teller no longer had all the money he took--and that he claimed he "accidentally discarded" some of it? Of course not. That is the sort of far-fetched story you would expect from a thief. And that is...

<p>"On December 4, 1999, the National Security Council?s counterterrorism coordinator, Richard Clarke, sent Mr. Berger a memo suggesting a strike in the last week of 1999 against Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. Reports the commission: ?In the margin next to Clarke?s suggestion to attack Al Qaeda facilities in the week before January 1, 2000, Berger wrote, "no." ?</p>

Covering up? U.S. officials tell us that the FBI is focusing on a single document in its investigation of former White House National Security Adviser Samuel R. Berger. Investigators are trying to determine why Mr. Berger improperly removed a highly classified after-action report by Richard A. Clarke, an aide to Mr. Berger, that was harshly critical of the Clinton administration's response to the so-called millennium terrorist plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport and other targets in late 1999.

[snip]In a statement, Mr. Berger said he "inadvertently took a few documents from the Archives" and when informed they were missing, he immediately returned everything he had "except for a few documents that apparently I had accidentally discarded." That's a lot of inadvertence and accidentalness for such a former high-ranking official.     Imagine the reaction if the current national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, had done such a thing and made a similar excuse. Democrats and the New York Times would be calling for her head and demanding she be sent to prison for breaking the law. "Accidentally" and "inadvertently" would not...

[snip]But if inexperience on the Kerry team is a liability, it turns out experience in foreign affairs is no bargain, either. I'm thinking, foremost, of Sandy Berger, the former national security adviser to Bill Clinton who has been a foreign-policy adviser to the Kerry campaign. Mr. Berger has plenty of experience. In fact, maybe too much. After news broke that the former Clinton adviser is the subject of a federal criminal investigation into the removal of highly classified documents from the National Archives in a) his leather portfolio, b) his jacket, c) his pants and d) very possibly his socks,...

'SANDY' STORM By DEBORAH ORIN July 23, 2004 -- Lawmakers are seeking to determine if any original documents are gone forever as they probe whether former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger hid top-secret files in his socks to sneak them out of the National Archives, a spokesman said yesterday. ---Snip--- Berger, who served under President Bill Clinton, says he accidentally destroyed some highly classified documents. Government officials wonder whether any of the documents bore handwritten notes from senior Clinton administration officials that don't appear elsewhere. If that were the case, the basic document would be available because other copies...

The Democratic apologists for Sandy Berger rushed, as expected, into the familiar War Room mode, accusing George W. Bush and his men (and women) of concocting a security scandal to divert attention from the litany of Bush failures they confidently expected to see in the final report of the 9/11 Commission.     As it turns out, there is no litany of Bush failures in the 9/11 report. Failures and shortcomings abound, with blame enough for everyone to share. But there is a connection between Sandy Berger's pants and the terrorist threat that hangs over us all. It's not the connection John...

Former Clinton White House counsel Lanny Davis fueled speculation on Thursday that he personally leaked the news that former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger was under criminal investigation by the Justice Department, by repeatedly dodging the question. Asked point-blank if he was the leaker, Davis refused to respond directly, but instead told Liberty Broadcasting's Linda Chavez that if he had asked a reporter the same question, the answer would be "None of your business." When Chavez pressed for a straight answer, Davis suggested he would have leaked the news last year to Associated Press reporter John Solomon, who actually...

Mr. Berger's Incredible MisadventurePublished: July 23, 2004 xactly why Samuel Berger removed copies of classified documents from the National Archives last October is not clear. Mr. Berger, the former national security adviser to President Clinton who was a Kerry adviser until Tuesday, wasn't going to be able to alter the records or give John Kerry an edge. The missing documents were copies of memos, which Mr. Kerry would have had access to anyway. If, as Mr. Berger says, the removal was simply a blunder, it was inexcusably careless legally and daft politically. Senator Kerry can't be too happy that Mr....

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...

After three days worth of denials from his legal team, eyewitnesses to Sandy Berger's top secret document heist have confirmed that the former national security advisor did indeed stash national security secrets in his socks, as well as his pants pockets. "The stuffed socks and pockets is real," a senior law enforcement official told the New York Daily News. "The (theft) was reported by the guards." Guards at the National Archives told the FBI that Berger was observed stuffing his socks with handwritten notes about files he reviewed that were going to the Sept. 11 panel, the News said. Guards...

KERRY'S SUDDENLY DISAPPEARING WEB DOCUMENTS Various Kerry Spot readers are calling attention to the fact that the Kerry web site appears to have removed the press release that used to be here: http://www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/releases/pr_2004_0227a.html But can still be seen in the Google cache here, and has been posted on the FreeRepublic.com discussion board here: The date of the event is February 27, 2004. The event was a speech at UCLA about homeland security, mentioning port security and airline security. Now, Kerry wouldn't need any secret documents from March 2000 to make a speech saying port and airline security should be improved...

If Berger was stealing classified information from the National Archives, ostensibly to help his party, either Kerry's election bid or clinton's so-called 'legacy', how does this compare to Watergate? Watergate was a burglery of DNC offices looking for information to help Nixon purportedly. So how does this rank?

Hey! Well, I got onto the Mark Levin show and exposed the Kerry-Berger connection (deleted files). If you don't know what I'm talking about, click here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1175720/posts P.S. Did anyone hear me on the show? I gave Free Republic a good plug :)

July 22, 2004 -- Joe Lockhart, the White House press secretary under Bill Clinton who still speaks for his former boss, had it right yesterday in discussing the growing Sandy Berger scandal. "The first rule of damage control," he said, "is to find an alternative story line. I think they've found one." Which is why Democrats, from Clinton on down, swiftly went on the offensive to change the topic about the criminal investigation that forced the onetime national security adviser to step down as an adviser to presidential candidate John Kerry. "Well, that's Sandy for you," Clinton told the Denver...

[snip]Meanwhile, President Bush yesterday said the investigation of Berger is "a very serious matter" that must be investigated by the Justice Department. Bush spoke about the matter the day after Berger stepped down as an adviser to John Kerry because of the probe into whether he hid the documents in his pants and socks. The House Government Reform Committee, an investigative panel, said it will conduct its own probe of what its chairman, Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), said was either "tremendously irresponsible" or a deliberate bid to conceal information. "It boggles the mind to imagine how a former national security...

Published July 22, 2004 Guards left Berger alone, sources say Ex-security adviser reportedly told monitors to violate rules as he took breaks, took files. By James Gordon Meek New York Daily News Washington — Former national security adviser Sandy Berger repeatedly persuaded monitors assigned to watch him review top-secret documents to break the rules and leave him alone, sources said Wednesday. Berger, accused of smuggling some of the secret files out of the National Archives, got the monitors out of the high-security room by telling them he had to make sensitive phone calls. Guards were convinced to violate their own...

One of the top secret documents stolen from the National Archives by former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger last fall had been "widely circulated," former National Security Council spokesman P.J. Crowley revealed on Wednesday. "This was a document back in 1999 and 2000 after the [foiled] Millennium [bomb plot]," Crowley told Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes." "It was the after-action review of what the government did." "This was a document that was very widely circulated," he added, without noting that the Millennium plot after-action review was considered so sensitive that it received the government's highest-coded security classification. Crowley did...

.The GapSandy Berger's pilfering of papers from the archive should be big trouble for the Democrats. Why is the press AWOL?by Hugh Hewitt07/22/2004 12:00:00 AMHERE ARE the two key sentence from yesterdays Washington Post: "[Sandy] Berger returned two of the after-action drafts within days, according to his attorneys. Other drafts of the after-action document, they said, were apparently discarded." As any lawyer who has ever argued over the contents of a brief knows, the stuff that gets left out can be the most telling material of all--indicative of prejudices and priorities, sensitivities and credibility. Berger's sticky fingers have left a...

Last Oct. 2, former Clinton national security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger stayed huddled over papers at the National Archives until 8 p.m. What he did not know as he labored through that long Thursday was that the same Archives employees who were solicitously retrieving documents for him were also watching their important visitor with a suspicious eye. After Berger's previous visit, in September, Archives officials believed documents were missing. This time, they specially coded the papers to more easily tell whether some went missing, said government officials and legal sources familiar with the case. The notion of one of...

<p>WASHINGTON, July 21 - The White House said Wednesday that senior officials in its counsel's office were told by Justice Department investigators months ago that a criminal investigation was under way to determine if Samuel R. Berger, the national security adviser under President Bill Clinton, removed classified documents about Al Qaeda from the National Archives.</p>

Archives Employees Suspicious of Berger... devised a coding system and marked the documents they knew Berger was interested in canvassing, and watched him carefully... employees determined that that draft and all four or five other versions of the millennium memo had disappeared from the files after Berger viewed them, WASH POST set to report, say sources... Developing...

I haven't watched CBS News in 15 years, but happened to catch a clip of Dan Rather's announcement of the Berger resignation, and was shocked at the undisguised partisanship of Mr. Rather. He stated that the Berger resignation was prompted by a "carefully orchestrated" set of manuevers, in effect blaming Republicans, while not even mentioning the fact that Mr. Berger was caught stealing documents from the National Archives. It's pathetic that CBS has been reduced to this low level. I can't find the transcript on the internet. Does anyone have it?

I BELIEVE THAT THIS IS THE RELEVANT STATUTE, 18 U.S.C. 793 (f), governing Berger's behavior: Sec. 793. - Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information (f) Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the...

Listen to Rush…(…reveal the research that shows Berger wasn't an informal Kerry advisor) BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: From the top, Clinton on down sets the tone for this. I think that's an excellent point, which next takes us to Senator Kerry because Senator Kerry hired this guy, Sandy Berger, to be an advisor. Now we're finding out -- no, now we're hearing, big difference -- we are hearing from the Kerry campaign, (Kerry sing-song voice) "Uh, he was just an infooormal advisooor. I never even saaaw him. I never spoke to him. He rode in the SUVs owned by the faaamily,...

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...

Berger’s Bonfire Berger’s record of inattention and malfeasance--and, yes, "sloppiness"--is unshreddable. "[Lindsey's] nicknames have run the gamut from "the Enforcer" to "the Consigliere," the Sicilian word for a trusted counsel to a Mafia chieftain." --Time Magazine, March 23 1998 [1] The astonishing admission of Samuel “Sandy” Berger, Bill Clinton’s longtime National Security Advisor, that he stuffed “code-word”-class secret documents into his pants, sneaked them out of a secure review room at the National Archives and “inadvertently” destroyed them is highly disquieting to those familiar with Berger’s background and activities in the Clinton Administration. In particular, the Washington Post reports [2]...

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...

MSNBC just announced that Terry McAuliffe has demanded ALL documents generated by the government in the investigation of Sandy Berger be handed over to the DNC immediately!

Clinton administration national security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, under criminal investigation for removing copies of highly classified documents from the National Archives, severed his ties to John F. Kerry's campaign yesterday. Berger, who has been the subject of an investigation since October, stepped down as Kerry's informal adviser on foreign policy and national security as the campaign moved quickly to stem the unfolding story's political damage. A government official with knowledge of the probe said Berger removed from archives files all five or six drafts of a critique of the government's response to the millennium terrorism threat, which he...

Just heard on CBS that no charges will be brought against Berger. The spin misters are saying they were only copies not the real documents.. It's time to make the calls to the elected ones!!!!!

ouse who now is under investigation for allegedly removing secret documents while in the National Archives preparing his testimony to the 9/11 commission, said Monday he "made an honest mistake." In a brief statement, the former national security adviser said any suggestion he was operating against the best interests of the inquiry was "absolutely wrong."

Berger Quits as An Adviser To Kerry Ex-Clinton Aide Facing Inquiry Over Papers By Susan Schmidt Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, July 21, 2004; Page A01 Clinton administration national security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, under criminal investigation for removing copies of highly classified documents from the National Archives, severed his ties to John F. Kerry's campaign yesterday. Berger, who has been the subject of an investigation since October, stepped down as Kerry's informal adviser on foreign policy and national security as the campaign moved quickly to stem the unfolding story's political damage. A government official with knowledge of the...

'STOCKING-STUFFER' BERGER QUITS KERRY By DEBORAH ORIN and VINCENT MORRIS -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- July 21, 2004 -- WASHINGTON — Former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger — under criminal investigation for sneaking top-secret documents out of the National Archives in his pants legs and, possibly, his socks — abruptly quit yesterday as an adviser to John Kerry. The "sock-doc" probe into Berger's conduct threatened to explode into a major headache for Kerry before next week's Democratic convention, where his top goal is to convince Americans that he can be trusted with national security. Berger, who served under then-President Bill Clinton, has been acting...

Print Article         Close Window     Sloppy Berger By Published 7/21/2004 12:08:11 AM The image of Sandy Berger stuffing notes into his socks at the National Archives conveys the culture of carelessness and corruption under Bill Clinton far better than anything the 9/11 Commission will report. The Commission fails to see that the fundamental explanation for America's porous security before 9/11 is not structural but cultural. Eight years of Clintonian indiscipline exposed America to attack by disciplined terrorists. America's elite are too enlightened to notice that lax morality produces lax security. But America's enemies are happy to notice even...