MORE ON THE SANDY BERGER STORY:
instapundit.com
What now emerges, by his own admission, is that Sandy Berger was engaged in a clumsy, post-9/11 cover-up of his own third-rate burglary.
Even more disturbing is the cavalier attitude of leading Democrats to this whole sordid affair.
"For all those who know and love him, it's easy to see how this would happen," one former White House colleague told The Washington Post at the time.
As for Bill Clinton himself, he couldn't stop chuckling over the whole thing.
"That's Sandy for you," he said at a Denver book signing last summer. "We were all laughing about it on the way over here."
Who's laughing now, Bill?
Not Sandy Berger.
Though in truth, he got off pretty light. As innumerable correspondents have indicated, an ordinary federal employee guilty of Berger's theft-and-lying behavior would have faced felony charges, lifetime loss of security clearance, and near-complete unemployability. For the big boys, though, the rules seem to be different.
UPDATE: Rand Simberg has more questions about what was going on, and wonders why the press hasn't been very interested in seeking answers.
transterrestrial.com
Mysteriouser And Mysteriouser
What is the credulity level of a reporter who can write a story like this with no allusion to how little sense it makes?
First, the lead:
The Justice Department said yesterday there was no evidence that former national security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger was trying to conceal information when he illegally took copies of classified terrorism documents out of the National Archives in 2003...
...Department lawyers concluded that Berger took the documents for personal convenience -- to prepare testimony -- and not with the intent of destroying evidence or thwarting the Sept. 11 panel's inquiry as to whether the Clinton administration did enough to confront a rising terrorist threat.
Then, she writes:
In acknowledging the crime to Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson, Berger said he knowingly took five copies of different versions of the same classified document -- briefings for the Clinton administration on terrorism threats -- from the National Archives in the fall of 2003. As part of his plea, Berger also acknowledged that he destroyed three of the copies, and returned the remaining two to archives officials and said he had "misfiled" them.
How does destroying documents help one "prepare testimony"? The story makes it sound like they were accidentally destroyed, but she can't be bothered to mention that he deliberately shredded them with scissors. There is still no explanation for this, from either her, or at least as she reports, from the Justice Department people.
And what are we to make of this?
Hillman noted that Berger only had copies of the documents -- not the originals -- and so was not charged with the more serious crime of destroying documents.
But if they were only "copies" (indicating that the information on them was identical) why did he need five of them? And what was the purpose of destroying three of them? Is Hillman an idiot? Why did he get such a light sentence when there are so many seemingly unanswered questions?
And I loved this bit:
Friends of Berger said he hopes the embarrassing episode does not badly tarnish his reputation.
As long as Berger, like all corrupt former Clinton officials, has friends in the press, his reputation will apparently be just fine. And does anyone think that this reporting would have been the same if it were a Bush administration official accused of the same thing? No, I suspect there's be much more curiousity on the part of this reporter, and others. |
