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Jolie Rouge · 12-21-2006, 12:40 AM

Report says Berger hid archive documents
By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press Writer
8 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - President Clinton's national security adviser removed classified documents from the National Archives, hid them under a construction trailer and later tried to find the trash collector to retrieve them, the agency's internal watchdog said Wednesday.

The report was issued more than a year after Sandy Berger pleaded guilty and received a criminal sentence for removing the documents.

Berger took the documents in the fall of 2003 while working to prepare himself and Clinton administration witnesses for testimony to the Sept. 11 commission. Berger was authorized as the Clinton administration's representative to make sure the commission got the correct classified materials.

Berger's lawyer, Lanny Breuer, said in a statement that the contents of all the documents exist today and were made available to the commission.

But Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., outgoing chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, said he's not convinced that the Archives can account for all the documents taken by Berger. Davis said working papers of National Security Council staff members are not inventoried by the Archives.

"There is absolutely no way to determine if Berger swiped any of these original documents. Consequently, there is no way to ever know if the 9/11 Commission received all required materials," Davis said.

Berger pleaded guilty to unlawfully removing and retaining classified documents. He was fined $50,000, ordered to perform 100 hours of community service and was barred from access to classified material for three years.

Officials told The Associated Press at the time of the thefts that the documents were highly classified and included critical assessments about the Clinton administration's handling of the millennium terror threats as well as identification of America's terror vulnerabilities at airports and seaports.

Inspector General Paul Brachfeld reported that National Archives employees spotted Berger bending down and fiddling with something white around his ankles.

The employees did not feel at the time there was enough information to confront someone of Berger's stature, the report said.

Later, when Berger was confronted by Archives officials about the missing documents, he lied by saying he did not take them, the report said.

Brachfeld's report included an investigator's notes, taken during an interview with Berger. The notes dramatically described Berger's removal of documents during an Oct. 2, 2003, visit to the Archives.

Berger took a break to go outside without an escort while it was dark. He had taken four documents in his pockets. "He headed toward a construction area. ... Mr. Berger looked up and down the street, up into the windows of the Archives and the DOJ (Department of Justice), and did not see anyone," the interview notes said.

He then slid the documents under a construction trailer, according to the inspector general. Berger acknowledged that he later retrieved the documents from the construction area and returned with them to his office. "He was aware of the risk he was taking," the inspector general's notes said. Berger then returned to the Archives building without fearing the documents would slip out of his pockets or that staff would notice that his pockets were bulging.

The notes said Berger had not been aware that Archives staff had been tracking the documents he was provided because of earlier suspicions from previous visits that he was removing materials. Also, the employees had made copies of some documents.

In October 2003, the report said, an Archives official called Berger to discuss missing documents from his visit two days earlier. The investigator's notes said, "Mr. Berger panicked because he realized he was caught."

The notes said that Berger had "destroyed, cut into small pieces, three of the four documents. These were put in the trash."

After the trash had been picked up, Berger "tried to find the trash collector but had no luck," the notes said.

Significant portions of the inspector general's report were redacted to protect privacy or national security.

Report says Berger hid archive documents - Yahoo! News

Jolie Rouge · 01-29-2007, 06:09 PM

Putting Sandy Berger to the test

A lie detector test. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,245658,00.html

As the FNC story points out, the document-filching Clinton aide did agree to take a polygraph test as part of a plea deal reached in September 2005. Now, some GOP lawmakers want to know why the Justice Department won't follow through:

Quote:

The Justice Department should administer a polygraph test to former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger to find out what documents he took from the National Archives in 2002 and 2003, Rep. Tom Davis wrote in a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales dated Monday.
Davis, ranking Republican on the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, is leading a group of 18 lawmakers who say the Justice Department has been "remarkably incurious" about Berger's decision to remove documents relating to the Sept. 11 commission's inquiry into his role in helping prevent terror attacks during the Clinton administration.

"It is extraordinarily important that the Justice Department avail itself of its rights under the plea agreement and administer a polygraph examination to Mr. Berger to question him about the extent of his thievery. This may be the only way for anyone to know whether Mr. Berger denied the 9/11 commission and the public the complete account of the Clinton administration's actions or inactions during the lead up to the terrorist attacks on the United States," Davis wrote.

Makes sense to me. So what's the hold up, DOJ?

Jolie Rouge · 01-29-2007, 06:14 PM

Paper Chase
Did investigators turn a blind eye to the seriousness of the Sandy Berger scandal?
Monday, January 29, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST

Washington scandals are curious things. Sometimes special prosecutors are appointed and the media provide saturation coverage of their doings. An example would be the Valerie Plame episode, which led to this month's perjury trial of Scooter Libby, the former White House aide accused of lying about who first told him Joe Wilson's wife worked for the CIA.

Then there are the barely noticed scandals, which prosecutors pursue quietly and professionally. Take the case of Donald Keyser, a former State Department official who last week was sentenced to just over a year in jail for keeping classified documents at his home and for lying about his personal relationship with a Taiwanese diplomat.

Then there is Sandy Berger, the former Clinton national security adviser who pleaded guilty last year to knowingly taking and destroying classified documents from the National Archives while preparing for his testimony before the 9/11 Commission.

When archives officials caught Mr. Berger, they bizarrely first asked a friend of his, former Clinton White House counsel Bruce Lindsey, for an explanation, rather than contact the Justice Department. After initially lying to investigators, Mr. Berger finally admitted that he took the documents, but only for "personal convenience."

Prosecutors accepted Mr. Berger's assurance that he had taken only five documents from the archives, even though on three of his four visits there he had access to original working papers of the National Security Council for which no adequate inventory exists. Nancy Smith, the archives official who provided the materials to Mr. Berger, said that she would "never know what if any original documents were missing." We have only Mr. Berger's word that he didn't take anything else. The Justice Department secured his agreement to take a polygraph on the matter, but never followed through and administered it.

The issue is still relevant.

Officials of the 9/11 Commission are now on record expressing "grave concern" about the materials to which Mr. Berger had access. A report from the National Archives Inspector General last month found he took extraordinary measures to spirit them out of the archives, including hiding them in his pockets and socks. He also went outside without an escort and put some documents under a construction trailer, from where he could later retrieve them.

After archives staff became suspicious of Mr. Berger during his third visit, they numbered some of the documents he looked at. After he left, they reviewed the documents and noted that No. 217 was missing. The next time he came, the staff gave him another copy of 217 with the comment that it had been inadvertently not made available to him during his previous visit. Mr. Berger appropriated the same document again.

What could have been so important for Mr. Berger to take such risks?

Was he trying to airbrush history by removing embarrassing information about the Clinton administration's fight against Osama bin Laden? As columnist Ron Cass has noted with dry understatement, "Bill Clinton has great sensitivity to his place in history and to accusations that he did too little to respond to al Qaeda." Last year the former president blew up when Chris Wallace of "Fox News Sunday" asked him, "Why didn't you do more to put bin Laden and al Qaeda out of business when you were president?"

Richard Miniter, author of "Losing bin Laden," notes that in 1996 President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan wrote Mr. Clinton a letter offering to hand over bin Laden, then living in Khartoum. A draft of that document was seen on the desk of a Sudanese official by then-U.S. Ambassador Tim Carney. The document itself has never been found, although there is no suggestion it was among the papers Mr. Berger was perusing.

Despite all of these unanswered questions, Mr. Berger was allowed to plead guilty last year to only a misdemeanor charge. As part of a plea agreement, the Justice Department asked him to pay a $10,000 fine for the violations, perform 100 hours of community service and lose his security clearance for just three years (meaning that he will be eligible to regain it just about the time the next president takes office). The presiding judge, outraged at the lenient plea bargain, bumped the fine up to $50,000.

The Inspector General's report found that the papers Mr. Berger took outlined the adequacy of the government's knowledge of terrorist threats in the U.S. in the final months of the Clinton administration--documents that could have been of some interest to the 9/11 Commission, before which Mr. Berger was scheduled to testify. The Washington Post buried news of the Inspector General's report on page 7; the New York Times dumped it on page 36.

But the report did catch the attention of Rep. Tom Davis, the ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, who last month, while he was still committee chairman, finished his own probe of the Berger affair. This week he and 17 other top Republicans wrote to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to detail the deficiencies the committee has found in the Justice Department's handling of the Berger case. They specifically asked him to administer the polygraph examination that Mr. Berger agreed to but was inexplicably never given.

While a polygraph is not admissible in court, it is a valuable tool investigators can use to lead them to other evidence. Andrew Napolitano, a former judge who is a legal analyst for Fox News, notes: "If they ask him, did you take document X, Y, Z, and he says no, and the polygraph shows that he's lying, that will send them on a hunt for document X, Y, Z." In addition, Mr. Berger would have to take the test under oath and thus could be prosecuted for perjury if he lied, even though his document-theft case is closed.

Philip Zelikow and Daniel Marcus, respectively the executive director and general counsel of the 9/11 Commission, told Mr. Davis's investigators that they were never told Mr. Berger had access to original classified documents for which no copies existed. Had he known, Mr. Zelikow says, he would had "grave concern."
As it was, the 9/11 Commission was not informed of any investigation of Mr. Berger's alleged tampering with documents until only two days before his testimony, and then in only the most vague terms. Not only were the 9/11 Commission not told that Mr. Berger had access to original documents; they were affirmatively led to believe that the commission got all the documents that Mr. Berger took. Both Mr. Zelikow and Mr. Marcus understood Justice to mean that there was no way Mr. Berger had taken any other documents. An investigator for the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee bluntly told Fox News last week: "The Justice Department lied to the 9/11 Commission about Sandy Berger. That is a fact." A Justice Department spokesman still insists it "has no evidence that Sandy Berger's actions deprived the 9/11 Commission of documents." But that raises the question: How hard did Justice look for such evidence?

The 9/11 Commission wishes it had known answers to that and more. It's time that Congress and the public learn why the Berger scandal was treated so nonchalantly.

http://opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110009591

Jolie Rouge · 04-05-2007, 01:21 AM

compare and contrast ....

Intern admits thefts from U.S. archives
By MARYCLAIRE DALE, Associated Press Writer
Wed Apr 4, 4:51 PM ET

PHILADELPHIA - A 40-year-old intern with the National Archives pleaded guilty Wednesday to stealing 164 Civil War documents, including an official announcement of President Lincoln's death, and putting most of them up for sale on eBay.

Prosecutors said Denning McTague, who has master's degrees in history and library science, put about 150 of the documents online and had shipped about half of them.

All but three of the items, worth an estimated $30,000 in all, have since been recovered.

McTague told investigators that he used a yellow legal pad to sneak the documents out while working at the National Archives and Records Administration last summer. As an unpaid intern, he had been responsible for arranging and organizing documents in preparation for the upcoming 150th anniversary of the Civil War.

A Gettysburg company that publishes books on the Civil War spotted some of the items on eBay and alerted authorities last fall, officials said.

The stolen Civil War-era documents included telegrams concerning the troops' weaponry, the War Department's announcement of Lincoln's death sent to soldiers, and a letter from famed cavalryman James Ewell Brown Stuart, prosecutors said.

McTague pleaded guilty to one federal count of stealing government property. He could receive up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine when he is sentenced July 12, but federal sentencing guidelines call for much less.

Paul Brachfeld, inspector general for the National Archives, said the documents are invaluable and getting them back was not easy, especially since some had been sold overseas.

The buyers, mostly history buffs, surrendered the documents after learning they were stolen. Prosecutors said they could get some reimbursement from McTague.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070404/...1oj7ApC_oXIr0F

___

On the Net: The National Archives and Records Administration: http://www.archives.gov

Jolie Rouge · 05-17-2007, 05:58 PM

Clinton aide forfeits law license in Justice probe
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
May 17, 2007

Samuel R. Berger, the Clinton White House national security adviser who was caught taking highly classified documents from the National Archives, has agreed to forfeit his license to practice law.

In a written statement issued by Larry Breuer, Mr. Berger's attorney, the former national security adviser said he pleaded guilty in the Justice Department investigation, accepted the penalties sought by the department and recognized that his law license would be affected. "I have decided to voluntarily relinquish my license," he said. "While I derived great satisfaction from years of practicing law, I have not done so for 15 years and do not envision returning to the profession. I am very sorry for what I did, and I deeply apologize."

In giving up his license, Mr. Berger avoids being cross-examined by the Board on Bar Counsel, where he risked further disclosure of specific details of his theft. The agreement is expected to be formalized today. Mr. Berger, national security adviser from 1997 to 2001, was convicted of removing documents from the Archives in 2005 while preparing to testify before the September 11 commission.

Fined $50,000, sentenced to 100 hours of community service and barred from access to classified material for three years, he also was ordered to undergo a polygraph test if asked -- although the Justice Department has declined to administer the test despite urging by Rep. Thomas M. Davis III of Virginia, ranking Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Governmental Reform.

In February, Mr. Davis called for a new investigation by the committee into the Berger theft, saying the Justice Department gave him a "free pass" in its investigation. In a terse letter signed by 17 Republicans, he said the department was "unacceptably incurious" about Mr. Berger's visits to the Archives in May 2002 and July 2003 and never told the September 11 commission he removed original, uninventoried documents. David Marin, the committee's Republican staff director, said the Justice Department told the September 11 commission it had everything Mr. Berger removed from the Archives and the nation's national-security exposure was "zero."

But, Mr. Marin said, no one told the commission that Mr. Berger had access to original documents, which he could have taken without detection. "We wanted the highest possible level of assurance that Mr. Berger did not take other documents," Mr. Marin said. "We still have the same concerns. Obvious investigative tools were not used. If you do not look, you will obviously not find the evidence."

Brian McNicoll, Mr. Davis' spokesman, said yesterday the decision by Mr. Berger to accept disbarment rather than face questions "does seem to cast doubt on claims by Mr. Berger and the Department of Justice that he need not complete the terms of his plea agreement and submit to a polygraph because he has revealed everything of significance he has to offer."

The Justice Department has said it was unaware of any new facts to support a new investigation.

Acting Assistant Attorney General Richard A. Hertling, in a letter to government reform committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman, California Democrat, said an "extensive investigation" led to a guilty plea and the department "stands by its investigation."

Mr. Hertling said the department devoted "significant resources" to the Berger probe, conducted more than 50 interviews and reviewed thousands of pages of documents. He also disputed Mr. Davis' conclusion that the department did not inquire about Mr. Berger's first two visits to the Archives. "Neither Mr. Berger nor any other witness provided the department with evidence that Mr. Berger had taken any documents beyond the five referenced in the plea agreement," he said.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/natio...3137-9942r.htm

Jolie Rouge · 10-09-2007, 12:15 AM

The Return of Sandy Berger Lies

When Sandy Berger's friends at the Department of Justice cut his disgusting plea bargain, they thoughtfully allowed for the restoration of his security clearance just in time for the return of the Clintons to the White House. A month ago Berger resurfaced as one of Ms. Hillary's advisors ( may be doing double duty in foreign policy and document management ?).

He’s back: Sandy Berger now advising Hillary Clinton
Oct 8, 2007 2:00 AM (20 hrs ago)
by Bill Sammon, The Examiner

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - Sandy Berger, who stole highly classified terrorism documents from the National Archives, destroyed them and lied to investigators, is now an adviser to presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Berger, who was fired from John Kerry’s presidential campaign when the scandal broke in 2004, has assumed a similar role in Clinton’s campaign, even though his security clearance has been suspended until September 2008.

This is raising eyebrows even among Clinton’s admirers. “It shows poor judgment and a lack of regard for Berger’s serious misdeeds,” said law professor Jonathan Adler of Case Western Reserve University, who nonetheless called Clinton “by far the most impressive candidate in the Democratic field.”

Adler told The Examiner that it is “simply incomprehensible to me that a serious contender for the presidency would rely upon him as a key foreign policy advisor.”

“If Senator Clinton becomes the Democratic nominee, at some point she will begin to receive national security briefings that will include sensitive information. At such a point, continuing to keep Berger on board as a key advisor, where he might have access to sensitive material, would be beyond incomprehensible.”

The Clinton campaign declined to comment.

Berger has admitted stealing documents from the National Archives in advance of the 9/11 Commission hearings in 2003. The documents, written by White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, were a “tough review” of the Clinton administration’s shortcomings in dealing with terrorism, Clarke’s lawyer told the Washington Post.

On several occasions, Berger stuffed highly classified documents into his pants and socks before spiriting them out of the Archives building in Washington, according to investigators. On one occasion, upon reaching the street, he hid documents under a construction trailer after checking the windows of the Archives and Justice Department buildings to make sure he was not being watched.

Berger came back later and retrieved the documents, taking them home and cutting them up with scissors. Two days later, he was informed by Archive employees that his removal of documents had been detected. “Berger panicked because he realized he was caught,” said a report by the National Archives inspector general, which also recounted his initial reaction. “Berger lied.”

Berger also lied to the public, telling reporters he made an “honest mistake” by “inadvertently” taking the documents, which he blamed on his own “sloppiness.” Bill Clinton vouched for the explanation for Berger, who served as his national security adviser.

Berger later conceded: “I was giving a benign explanation for what was not benign.”

The Justice Department initially said Berger stole only copies of classified documents and not originals. But the House Government Reform Committee later revealed that an unsupervised Berger had been given access to classified files of original, uncopied, uninventoried documents on terrorism. Several Archives officials acknowledged that Berger could have stolen any number of items and they “would never know what, if any, original documents were missing.”

At his sentencing in September 2005, Berger was fined $50,000, placed on probation for two years and stripped of his security clearance for three years.

http://www.examiner.com/a-977346%7EH...y_Clinton.html

Jolie Rouge · 10-09-2007, 12:26 AM

[center]"The road to tyranny,
we must never forget,
begins with the destruction of the truth.”

-- Bill Clinton,
October 15, 1995
University of Connecticut. [/i]

I laughed out loud when I read the story about Sandy ("Gee, how’d those documents get in my socks?")Berger advising the Clinton campaign.

Oh, I hope it’s true. What a perfect illustration of the kind of scumbags we can expect the Clintons to bring with them.

If this story is true, either she thinks she has the nomination and the election sewed up, or Sandy-boy has one BIG stick he’s holding over the Clintons.

He better hire his own security detail so he doesn’t end up in Fort Marcy Park being investigated by the US Park Police.

This past January, Bill Bennett invited conservatives to vent their anger over Berger's lies, crimes, and slap on the wrist in a "Sandy Berger Lies" song contest on his Morning in America syndicated radio show. http://bennettmornings.com/ Morning in America producer Seth Leibsohn kindly sends along the concluding highlight clip with the contest winner here. http://fetch.noxsolutions.com/bennet...07_contest.mp3

LuvBigRip · 10-09-2007, 11:40 AM

If a Republican had done this the media would be coming unglued. I heard about this on FOX, not suprisingly nothing on CNN, MSNBC or the Big 3

tigger4 · 10-09-2007, 11:46 AM

How many Republicans lately have been busted for ethical reasons????

The list is amazingly long. Gay sex in bathrooms, having your number in a prostitutes phone log, sex with pages, etc. Then, you have the whole Scooter Libby situation.

The Democrats aren't the only ones out there that have problems.

LuvBigRip · 10-09-2007, 11:52 AM

No kidding, and the media came unglued. It was on every talk show, every news report, but a man who stole classified documents is allowed on a presidential campaign??? C'mon. I think that rates as news. Especially whjen the Clintons were plagued with scandals of corruption. Thsi guy was a National Security Advisor. He stole classified documents, lied about it, committed perjury and yet there was no congressional grillings, no Alberto Gonzales like flaying.

tigger4 · 10-09-2007, 11:55 AM

I agree that he is wrong. And I think the Clinton is crazy for letting him be part of her team. You would think she would want to distance herself from scandal.