Part
One > > >
| Fishy
Cheesy Berger |
 |
Former Clinton
administration National Security Advisor Sandy Berger removed highly classified |
| terrorism documents
and handwritten notes from a secure reading room while preparating for his 9/11 Commission
testimony. House Speaker Dennis Hastert's statement follows. |
| "I
am profoundly troubled by allegations that former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger
removed highly classified documents from the National Archives regarding the Clinton
Administration's handling of terrorist attacks prior to the September 11th attacks. |
| What could those
documents have said that drove Mr. Berger to remove them without authorization from a
secure reading room for classified documents? |
| What information
could be so embarrassing that a man with decades of experience in handling classified
documents would risk being caught pilfering our nation's most sensitive secrets? |
| Did these documents
detail simple negligence or did they contain something more sinister? Was this a bungled
attempt to rewrite history and keep critical information from the 9/11 Commission and
potentially put their report under a cloud? |
| It is my
understanding that Mr. Berger shoved this classified information into his clothing to
smuggle them out of the National Archives. Press reports indicate that Archival staff
became concerned when documents began to disappear and specifically marked additional
documents to track them. A number of those documents also turned up missing. |
| Mr. Berger has a lot
of explaining to do. He was given access to these documents to assist the 9/11 Commission,
not hide information from them. The American people and the 9/11 families don't want
cover-ups when it comes to the War on Terror. They want the truth. And so does the U.S.
House of Representatives." |
| The investigation is
ongoing. No decision has been made on whether Berger should face criminal charges.
Officials said the missing documents were highly classified and included critical
assessments of the Clinton administration's handling of the millennium terror threats and
identification of America's vulnerabilities at airports and sea ports. |
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| GlobalNewscast |
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Part
Two > > >
| Melting
Cheese |
 July 21, 2004, By
James Gordon Meek, New York Daily News |
Guards Left Berger
Alone |
| Ex-security adviser
reportedly told monitors to violate rules as he took breaks & took files. |
| 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 rules by stepping out of
the secure room as he looked over documents and allegedly stashed some in his clothing,
sources said. |
| "He was supposed
to be monitored at all times but kept asking the monitor to leave so he could make private
calls,"a senior law enforcement source told the Daily News. Berger also took
"lots of bathroom breaks" that aroused some suspicion, the source added. It is
standard procedure to constantly monitor anyone with a security clearance who examines the
type of code-word classified files stored in the underground archives vault. |
| The same archive
monitors told the FBI Berger was observed stuffing his socks with handwritten notes about
files he reviewed that were going to the Sept. 11 panel. It is prohibited to make notes
about the secret files and leave with them without special approval. |
| Berger's attorney,
Lanny Breuer, has denied the allegation that Berger hid papers in his socks." |
| Separately, Congress
is preparing its own investigation. |
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| GlobalNewscast |
|
Part
Three > > >
| Red-Handed |
 |
Documented by the New
York Sun: "Look now to what the 9/11 report
has to say about the man to whom President Clinton, |
| under attack by an
independent counsel, delegated so much in respect of national security, Samuel
“Sandy” Berger. |
| The report cites a
1998 meeting between Mr. Berger and the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, at
which Mr. Tenet presented a plan to capture Osama bin Laden. “In his meeting with
Tenet, Berger focused most, however, on the question of what was to be done with Bin Ladin
if he were actually captured. He worried that the hard evidence against Bin Ladin was
still skimpy and that there was a danger of snatching him and bringing him to the United
States only to see him acquitted,” the report says, citing a May 1, 1998, Central
Intelligence Agency memo summarizing the weekly meeting between Messrs. Berger and Tenet. |
| In June of 1999,
another plan for action against Mr. bin Laden was on the table. The potential target was a
Qaeda terrorist camp in Afghanistan known as Tarnak Farms. The commission report released
yesterday cites Mr. Berger’s “handwritten notes on the meeting paper”
referring to “the presence of 7 to 11 families in the Tarnak Farms facility, which
could mean 60-65 casualties.”According to the Berger notes, “if he responds,
we’re blamed." |
| 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.’ ” |
| In August of 2000,
Mr. Berger was presented with another possible plan for attacking Mr. bin Laden.This time,
the plan would be based on aerial surveillance from a “Predator” drone. Reports
the commission: “In the memo’s margin,Berger wrote that before considering
action, ‘I will want more than verified location: we will need, at least, data on
pattern of movements to provide some assurance he will remain in place.’ ” |
| In other words,
according to the commission report, Mr. Berger was presented with plans to take action
against the threat of Al Qaeda four separate times — Spring 1998, June 1999, December
1999, and August 2000. Each time, Mr. Berger was an obstacle to action. Had he been a
little less reluctant to act, a little more open to taking pre-emptive action, maybe the
2,973 killed in the September 11, 2001, attacks would be alive today. |
| It really
doesn’t matter now what was in the documents from the National Archives that Mr.
Berger says he inadvertently misplaced. The evidence in the commission’s report
yesterday is more than enough to embarrass him thoroughly.He is a hardworking, warm man
with a wonderful family, but his background as a trade lawyer and his dovish, legalistic
and political instincts made him, in retrospect,the tragically wrong man to be making
national security decisions for America in wartime.That Senator Kerry had Mr. Berger as a
campaign foreign policy adviser even before the archives scandal is enough to raise doubts
about the senator’s judgment. |
| Neither Mr.Berger nor
any other American is to blame for the deaths of Americans on September 11, 2001. The
moral fault lies only with the terrorists, not with the victims.With the war still on,one
can’t help but to ponder who might best defend the country going forward, and how."
* * * End * * * |
| Separately: Officials
of the National Archives are seriously concerned about Berger's removal of classified
documents. They have since mandated new security measures governing review of sensitive
material, including the installation of full-time surveillance cameras. |
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| GlobalNewscast |
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Part
Four > > >
| Warnings
Covered |
 |
Berger's Papers Bared
A Translation Disaster
July 29, 2004, By Niles Lathem, NY Post Correspondent |
| "Urgent complaints that the FBI could not
decipher bugged conversations between members of a Brooklyn mosque and Afghan terrorists
because it lacked translators were included in the documents former National Security
Adviser Sandy Berger removed from the National Archives, The Post has learned. |
| In the latest twist to the document scandal,
investigators said the revelation about translators was among several criticisms of
America’s ability to deal with the looming al Qaeda threat contained in the
“after action” memo on the millennium terror plot that is at the center of the
Berger probe. |
| Officials said an appeal to hire more
translators familiar with Arabic, Pashto and other key “counter-terrorism”
languages at the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency was among 29 proposals to tighten
security contained in the report. |
| The report written by former White House
counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke also warned of the presence of al Qaeda cells
inside the United States. It urged increased surveillance of Arab students coming into the
United States and called for increased security at U.S. ports and other points of entry,
investigators said. |
| The Clinton administration is reported to have
only adopted one of its proposals. |
| Government officials said the FBI had been
conducting electronic surveillance of a mosque in Brooklyn frequented by Afghans in 1999
after developing information from the investigation of the U.S. embassy bombings in East
Africa. |
| Sources said the FBI had “hours” of
taped conversations between people associated with the unidentified mosque and suspected
terrorist leaders. |
| But despite the potential intelligence value of
the intercepted communications, stacks of tapes languished on the shelves at the FBI
counter- terrorism center in downtown Manhattan because there were not enough translators. |
| The problem of the lack of capable translators
persisted right up to the 9/11 attacks and has been frequently cited as a key weakness. |
| The FBI reported to Congress in January 2002
— two years after the Clarke memo to Berger — that it had backlogs of
“thousands of unreviewed and untranslated materials.” |
| Berger, who stepped down as an adviser to
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry’s campaign... has called the removal of
the National Archives documents an honest mistake. He said he was taking notes to prepare
for testimony before the 9/11 commission. |
| Congressional committees are investigating
whether Berger's real interest may have been handwritten notes on the margins of each copy
of the report. Those notes could potentially contain responses from Berger and other top
Clinton aides to the memo's recommendations." |
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| GlobalNewscast |
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Part Five
| The Outcome |
| Berger's sentence
was handed down on September 8, 2005. Enough time had passed to permit |
| his sentence to be a joke. At least joked about
by anyone in his inner circle. |
| US Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson handed
Berger a $50,000 fine for having illegally taken classified documents from the National
Archives. Berger avoids prison time but he is forced to surrender access to classified
government materials for three years. |
| Berger stood before the magistrate and
expressed remorse for his crime. He described it as a lapse of judgment that came while he
was preparing to testify before the September 11 Commission. |
| Berger said, I let considerations of personal
convenience override clear rules of handling classified material... I believe this lapse,
serious as it is, does not reflect the character of myself. In this case, I failed. I will
not again." |
| The sentencing hearing was the finale in a
series of events in which Berger admitted to sneaking classified documents out of the
Archives in his suit, later destroying some of them in his office and then lying about it. |
| Berger initially said he made an
"honest mistake." In April he plead guilty to a misdemeanor of unauthorized
removal and retention of classified material, which contained information relating to
terror threats in the United States during the 2000 millennium celebration. |
| No
one died when Clinton lied. But America rotted a little further. |
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| GlobalNewscast |
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