<font color=brown> He stuffed them "into his socks and other parts of his clothing".....does that include underwear? Ugh!
I smell [so to speak] a Republican behind these accusations. <g> <font color=black>
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Colleagues defend Berger in documents probe
Davis: 'A person of impeccable honesty and integrity'
Tuesday, July 20, 2004 Posted: 1:13 PM EDT (1713 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Former colleagues Tuesday defended former national security adviser Samuel Berger from allegations that he took secret documents from the National Archives while reviewing Clinton administration records for the 9/11 commission.
Sources said that among the documents Berger took were drafts of a Clinton administration "after-action" report on efforts to thwart the so-called "Millennium" plot, a suspected al Qaeda attack around the New Year's holiday in late 1999.
In a statement issued late Monday, Berger said the removal of those papers was unintentional. But law enforcement sources told CNN that some of the papers he is said to have taken from the National Archives were stuffed into his socks as well as other parts of his clothing.
That allegation drew sharp responses from two of Berger's associates. President Clinton's former spokesman, Joe Lockhart, said Berger "categorically denies that he ever took documents and stuffed them in his socks.
"That is absurd," said Lockhart, who is now advising Berger. "And anyone who says that is interested in something other than the truth."
Former Clinton aide Lanny Davis challenged any unnamed official who accuses Berger of stuffing documents into his socks to come forward and level that charge publicly.
"I suggest that person is lying," he said. "And if that person has the guts, let's see who it is who made the comment that Sandy Berger stuffed something into his socks."
Davis called Berger "a person of impeccable honesty and integrity."
"He spent nights and 24-hour time periods before the millennium doing, I think, a critical job in thwarting a terrorist attack between 1999 and 2000, New Year's Eve," Davis told CNN's "American Morning."
"What we're told ... [is] he took copies of those memos inadvertently in his own notes. There's absolutely no basis for suggesting there is any national security issues here or harm done here."
One Berger associate said Berger acknowledges placing his handwritten notes into his pants pockets, and perhaps into his jacket as well. National Archives' policy requires that if someone reviews classified documents and wants to take handwritten notes out, those notes must first be cleared by archivists.
Berger said Monday that he returned everything he had after the National Archives told him documents were missing, "except for a few documents that apparently I had accidentally discarded."
"I deeply regret the sloppiness involved, but I had no intention of withholding documents from the commission, and to the contrary, to my knowledge, every document requested by the commission from the Clinton administration was produced," he said in a written statement.
Berger was designated as the official from the Clinton administration who would review documents relevant to commission inquiries. He also was a witness at the 9/11 commission hearings and reviewed records to prepare for his personal testimony.
He currently serves as an informal adviser to the campaign of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry.
Rep. Duncan Hunter, the Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, told the Fox news channel Tuesday that Berger may have taken the documents to help Kerry's campaign.
"I've seen Sandy Berger's protestations and he's proclaimed his innocence and his good faith and said it was just a mistake -- he was just sloppy. I think we accept that," Hunter said.
But Hunter said there was a "certain discipline" needed to separate politics from public duty, "and obviously he's violated that discipline."
Kerry spokesman David Wade said the candidate was unaware of the probe, and Wade said the campaign would have no comment on an ongoing investigation.
The investigation has been under way since October, and its disclosure the week before the Democratic National Convention in Boston -- and just days before the 9/11 commission is due to release its report -- led sources close to Berger to question whether the news was leaked for political reasons.
"This has been kept confidential for months," a former Clinton administration colleague said. "So why now?"
But an administration source told CNN that any suggestion the Justice Department leaked the investigation on purpose now is "simply not true."
A government source said some of the documents at issue were classified as "code word" materials -- the highest level of secrecy in the U.S. government, making them held more closely than nuclear secrets. The source said the 9/11 commission was briefed on the Berger investigation, but the White House was never informed of the matter.
Archives officials told investigators that at least one draft of the Millennium plot after-action report is still missing. But Al Felzenberg, a spokesman for the 9/11 commission, said commissioners have no reason to believe the Berger investigation will affect "the substance or integrity" of its final report, due to be released Thursday.
Felzenberg said the panel "believes it had access to all materials needed to do our report," and was "reasonably certain" it saw all versions of the missing after-action memo.
Associates said Berger knew there were copies of the documents and that former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, the after-action report's author, was cooperating with the commission inquiry. They questioned what motive Berger would have had to take and destroy documents.
Two sources associated with the investigation said Berger's lawyer, Lanny Breuer, made a detailed statement of Berger's view of the facts at issue several months ago and has offered to talk to the Justice Department about a resolution to the probe. Breuer has renewed his offer to talk several times since, one of the Berger associates said, but said prosecutors have refused to enter into such discussions.
In the case of the classified documents removed from the Archives, the associate said Berger was reviewing thousands of documents and trying to "power read" as much as possible -- placing some in a pile to be forwarded to the 9/11 commission and others in a "nonresponsive" file to be returned, because he did not believe they were relevant to the commission's requests.
Berger has told associates and his attorneys he deliberately set aside drafts of the Millennium after-action report because it was a longer document and "he knew he needed to take some time on it," according to one adviser.
In Berger's account, after hours of reading documents he inadvertently took the documents he had set aside to read later along with other materials and a leather portfolio he had carried into to the screening room.
CNN's John King, Kelli Arena, Bob Franken and Pam Benson contributed to this report.
cnn.com |
