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To: LindyBill who wrote (55661)	7/22/2004 10:12:37 AM
From: gamesmistress	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793843

Belmont Club on the implications of the Berger story: Jammers It would be wrong to speculate on Sandy Berger's ultimate motive for removing classified documents from the National Archives. Working with insufficient information is the best way to mislead one's self. However, there might be some value to adopting a preliminary framework for understanding new information as it comes to light. The model that comes readily to mind is to regard Berger's escapade as a kind of information countermeasure. The most common ways to conceal information are to 1) create a decoy signal; 2) generate enough noise to blot out the underlying information; and 3) to reduce the signal of the original information which you want to conceal. Most readers are broadly familiar with the countermeasures used on military aircraft. They can release decoys, like flares or drones. They can emit signals from jamming pods to white out the enemy radar screens. They can employ a variety of measures to reduce their reflection so that they remain unseen, the so-called stealth technology. Each of these corresponds to one type of countermeasure described above. As an exercise one can hypothetically regard the Plame-Wilson affair, the Richard Clarke book and Sandy Berger's bungled theft as representatives of these three kinds of information countermeasures. The first establishes a false "blip" -- the Bush Lied meme -- which misled intelligent bloggers like Oxblog's Patrick Belton for weeks as he followed this phantom echo. The Richard Clarke book can be considered a noise barrager type of countermeasure. It was for the most part a big sound and light show laced with ominous drumrolls with nothing behind it. When the time came to set Clarke's book against Condoleeza Rice's testimony at the 9/11 hearings there was curious lack of collision, as might be expected once you got past the boundary generated by a noise jammer. Berger's attempt to stuff codeword classified documents into his pants and socks looks like signature-reduction exercise on its face. It was an attempt to excise information; to create a stealth object which could pass through unnoticed. The presence of countermeasures almost always indicates the presence of real information which the jamming is intended to protect. One of the reasons that coverups are so dangerous is they create the danger of "home-on-jam", where the source of jamming signal is itself targeted. The significance of catching Sandy Berger in the act of purloining classified couments is that it enables investigators to "home-on-jam", to find the beneficiary of the coverup. Where will it lead? Stay tuned. Remember that jamming needs to work just long enough for the real bandit to accomplish its mission. belmontclub.blogspot.com

To: LindyBill who wrote (55661)	7/22/2004 10:15:04 AM
From: gamesmistress	Respond to of 793843

Re: Berger being careless Editorial: Proper exit / Berger was too experienced to misplace documents Thursday, July 22, 2004 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette For whatever reasons and under whatever circumstances Sandy Berger, national security adviser in the second Clinton administration, removed classified documents and notes from the National Archives last year, which prompted an FBI investigation. He shouldn't have done it. His subsequent decision to separate himself from the campaign of Sen. John F. Kerry for president was correct and should not be reversed, even if no formal prosecution follows from the probe. The idea that Mr. Berger walked off with the documents accidentally is not credible. Anyone who worked in the U.S. government with classified materials for the 12 years that Mr. Berger did has it deeply ingrained in him to take extreme care to protect the security of those materials. It is thus highly improbable that he put the documents in question into his personal leather folder and his jacket and pants pockets by mistake and carried them away. If his notes were derived from classified material, they, too, became classified and needed to be handled as such. So why did he do it? One theory is that he may have been purging the files of documents that would be damaging to him or to former President Clinton if they remained available to the Sept. 11 commission. This is the theory that some Republicans have leapt on to try to limit what they expect to be the damage to the Bush administration that the commission's report will inflict when it is released today. A second theory, one that is kinder to Mr. Berger, is that he wanted to have the documents in hand to make certain that his testimony before the commission, which finally took place in March, was accurate. He was, after all, testifying under oath about events that occurred at least three years before. Mr. Berger said he "made an honest mistake." He told reporters that "[e]verything that I have done all along in this process has been for the purpose of aiding and supporting the work of the 9/11 commission, and any suggestion to the contrary is simply, absolutely wrong.'' A missing piece in all this is why the disappearance of the documents was noticed last year by the guardians of the archives, but the matter didn't see the light of day until Monday. The timing of the release of the news may have had something to do with damage control for the Bush administration on the report of the Sept. 11 commission. Regardless, Mr. Kerry and his team and, presumably, Mr. Berger himself realized quickly that the classified-documents affair made him a clear liability to the campaign, and that a quick separation was definitely in order Tuesday. Mr. Berger had been mentioned as a possible secretary of state in a prospective Kerry Cabinet. Given the amount of baggage that senior officials from previous administrations can carry -- Mr. Berger's being one case in point -- it makes sense to start a new administration with new faces, not retreads from previous regimes of the same party. Examples can be cited from both the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. The circumstances under which Mr. Berger has been taken out of the game are regrettable. He should not have compromised classified government documents. It is not a bad thing, however, that he has been virtually ruled out for a senior post in a possible future Kerry administration.