Kerry and Berger

Washington Times ^ | 7/23/04 | Diana West

[kattracks]

[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, Mr. Berger parted company from the Kerry campaign. Or vice versa.
    Clearly, this is not the sort of experience a presidential candidate prizes in a campaign adviser, although at least one ex-president already has pronounced the whole affair hilarious. "We were all laughing about it," Mr. Clinton told the Denver Post, reminiscing about his former NSC chief's messy desk. Mr. Clinton added he'd known about this "non-story" — the non-story that Mr. Berger's mishandling of top-secret terror documents was under investigation — for several months. (Did Mr. Kerry? When asked, the Democratic presidential candidate told NBC's Tom Brokaw, "I didn't have a clue, not a clue.")
     To be sure, there is something pretty uproarious in the thought of Mr. Berger stuffing stacks of paper into his jacket, pants and very possibly his socks. Strip away the clothes, though, and the laughter dies. As Mr. Berger tells it, he "inadvertently" left the archives building with secret documents — reportedly, drafts of a critique of the Clinton administration's response to the millennium terrorist threat — and later "accidentally" threw them away. Was Mr. Berger trying to eliminate a blot on theClinton-Bergerescutcheon? Trolling for information useful to the Kerry campaign? Or was he making, as he says, "an honest mistake"? Congress has decided to find out. Meanwhile, it's a safe bet Mr. Berger won't be vetting Kerry policy on national-security breeches any time soon.

[snip]

[oreolady]

Good post, let's keep bumping and talking about this to keep it alive!!!!
I can't get my question answered what authority burgler had to go into the archives.
He no longer is advisor to the pres Or kerry.
Your security clearance CANNOT be good indefinitely after leaving office, can it??? (That doesn't make any sense, why he gets in)
HMMM????????????

On speculation of which I haven't see any re kerrry's new "security advisor, replacing sandysox"?
He will have the same trouble as clinton finding someone reputable, these scum don't asociate with anyone respectable or reputable.

[dano1]

"In short, Mr. Wilson has been exposed as a fraud, even as British intelligence claims (and, by extension, the president's statement on Iraq and uranium) have been confirmed. Will Mr. Kerry distance himself from Mr. Wilson as he has distanced himself from Mr. Berger?"

"Better not ask Kerry surrogate and national campaign co-chairman Max Cleland. Just this week, the former senator was still pushing nasty Wilsonian (Joe) baby-talk as Democratic wisdom: Mr. Bush "flat-out lied" on Iraq, he told reporters, and went to war "because he concluded his daddy was a failed president [because] he did not take out Saddam Hussein." Mr. Cleland's conclusion? Mr. Bush is "Mr. Macho Man." Candidate Kerry, he added, agrees with this pyscho-analysis of foreign affairs."

"Does he? I would love to hear the answer."

[OldFriend]

Bill Clinton chose all the hack leftovers from the Carter administration for his cabinet.

Kerry will choose those same failed politicians for his cabinet and America will be doomed.

Carter, Clinton and then Kerry will have taken us so far down the path to destruction there will be no way to get back.

[Tom_Busch]

I'm apt to agree with you. I don't think the importance of President Bush getting reelected can be overstated.

[OldFriend]

The damage done by these men cannot be underestimated. They have buried evil people in all our institutions.....State Dept. Justice Department, Intelligence communities, etc.

To say nothing of the judges around the country who impact our daily life in negative ways.

[Tom_Busch]

I agree 100%. Most people I've talked with, are so brainwashed by the old media and the elites, that they don't even have an inkling of what we are really facing here.

[OldFriend]

My husband works with some of these people. Ignorant is the kindest description for them.

[samtheman]

bump

[AFPhys]

Security clearances do not automatically expire. They are based primarily on background investigations, and must be periodically "renewed" or "refreshed", it might be said.

That being said, the right to "ACCESS" certain information is based primarily on "right to know". That clearly does expire, and Berger would not have been allowed to simply waltz in to the Archives at any time to access documents.

In this case, however, he DID have a "right to know" and access the information, as he had been tasked by the 9/11 Commission to review documents and get pertinent items to them.