Here is the way CBS played it last night. Note the frame.
DAN RATHER: Sandy Berger, who was national security adviser under President Clinton, stepped aside today as an adviser to Senator John Kerry. CBS's John Roberts reports this was triggered by a carefully orchestrated leak about Berger, and the timing of it appears to be no coincidence.
JOHN ROBERTS: Even as he testified before the 9-11 Commission, former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger was under criminal investigation for removing several highly classified documents from the National Archives. Through his attorney, Berger today pled sloppiness.
LANNY BREUER (Berger's Attorney): He's not an organized guy, and when he was reviewing documents, he wasn't particularly organized in his review of documents.
ROBERTS: It was on one of three trips to the archives last year to vet documents for the 9-11 Commission that Berger says he inadvertently put several highly classified draft intelligence reports into a leather portfolio he was carrying. But he does admit, against archives policy, he intentionally smuggled out of the archives handwritten notes he needed for his commission testimony hidden in his pocket.
Republicans in both the Justice Department and Congress today accused Berger of stuffing his pants with classified data. In a statement, House Speaker Dennis Hastert blasted him for 'pilfering our nation's most sensitive secrets.' Nonsense, said Berger's former boss today.
Former Pres. BILL CLINTON: This thing's been going on for months. And the 9-11 Commission's gone out of their way to talk about how forthcoming we were from the very beginning, giving all the information.
ROBERTS: The 9-11 Commission agrees. It got everything it wanted from Berger. And Republicans and Democrats alike say the timing of the investigation's disclosure smells like politics, leaked to the press just two days before the 9-11 Commission report comes out.
EDDIE MAHE (Republican Strategist): Somebody is manipulating the process--I will say that categorically--for some agenda of some kind.
ROBERTS: Berger returned to the archives all but two of the documents, which he believes he accidentally threw away. An FBI search of his home in January turned up nothing, and late today, law enforcement sources say they don't expect any criminal charges will be filed. Dan.
RATHER: John Roberts reporting live from the White House. Thanks.
--Dan Rather and John Roberts on the CBS Evening News, July 20, 2004. |
