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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...