# Kerrys first scandle didn't take long



## Bobm (Aug 26, 2003)

Berger on the 'Wall' 
The election debate behind the documents-in-pants caper.

Wednesday, July 21, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

We'll grant that visions of a former National Security Adviser stuffing classified documents down his trousers or socks makes for good copy. But count us more interested in learning what's in the documents themselves than in where on his person Sandy Berger may have put them when he was sneaking them out of the National Archives.

For the evidence suggests that the missing material cuts to the heart of the choice offered in this election: Whether America treats terrorism as a problem of law enforcement or an act of war.

Mr. Berger admits to having deliberately taken handwritten notes he'd made out of the Archives reading room. On the more serious charges involving the removal (and subsequent discarding) of highly classified documents--including drafts of a key, after-action memo Mr. Berger had himself ordered on the U.S. response to al Qaeda threats in the run-up to the Millennium--he maintains he did so "inadvertently." *Yeah right, he stuffed documents in his pockets and socks by inadvertantly!!!!*

_*There's only one way to clear away the political smoke: Release all the drafts of the review Mr. Berger took from the room. *_

*If it's all as innocent as Mr. Berger's friends are saying, there's no reason not to make them public*. But there are good reasons for questioning Mr. Berger's dog-ate-my-homework explanation. To begin with, he was not simply preparing for his testimony before the 9/11 Commission. He was the point man for the Clinton Administration, reviewing and selecting the documents to be turned over to the Commission.

Written by Richard Clarke for the NSC, the key document was called the Millennium After-Action Review because it dealt with al Qaeda attacks timed for the eve of the Millennium celebrations. In his own 9/11 testimony, Mr. Berger described these al Qaeda plans as "the most serious threat spike of our time in government." He went on to say that they provoked "sustained attention and rigorous actions" from the Administration that ended up saving lives.

*But Attorney General John Ashcroft, who has the advantage of having read the document in question, had a different take*. In his own 9/11 testimony in April, Mr. Ashcroft recommended that the Commission "study carefully" the after-action memo. *He described it as laying out vulnerabilities and calling for aggressive remedies of the type he and the Bush Administration have been criticized for.* Mr. Ashcroft further noted that when he took office, this "highly classified review" was "not among" the items he was briefed on during the transition.

Maybe that is because of the potential for embarrassment at the mentality the memo reveals. Mr. Ashcroft testified that the Justice Department's "surveillance and FISA operations were specifically criticized for their glaring weaknesses." The most glaring, of course, were the restrictions on the sharing of critical information between intelligence and law enforcement--even within the FBI itself. *This was the infamous "wall of separation" that Clinton Deputy AG Jamie Gorelick instructed the FBI director should "go beyond what is legally required*."

From today's vantage we can see the consequences. Ahmed Ressam was one of the would-be Millennium bombers whom the French had identified to U.S. intelligence agencies as an al Qaeda operative planning to attack America. But the "wall of separation" meant that when an alert U.S. customs officer stopped Ressam as he tried to enter the country from Vancouver, the Justice Department had no idea who he was. This helps illuminate the claim made in the missing memo, according to Mr. Ashcroft's testimony, that our success in stopping these 1999 attacks was a result of sheer "luck."
Assuming Mr. Ashcroft's characterizations under oath are true, it would explain why Mr. Berger's "inadvertent" actions seemed to zero in on the various drafts of this review. Sources tell us that Archives staff noticed documents missing after one of Mr. Berger's visits. After gently raising the issue with him, they were shocked to have him return other documents they hadn't even noticed missing. The result was that the next time Mr. Berger went to the Archives, the documents he was given were all marked.

Mr. Berger attributes the disappearance of this classified information to the kind of "sloppiness" that comes from reviewing "thousands of pages of documents." *But it strikes us as amazing that mere sloppiness could account for how Mr. Berger seized on the same memo during two different visits.*

We're not interested in rehashing what the Clinton Administration or even Mr. Berger did or didn't do vis-a-vis the al Qaeda threat pre-9/11. Nor are we much interested about Mr. Berger's troubles with the law. What does interest us is what this memo might tell us about how America should respond to terror. 
Given Mr. Berger's role (until he resigned yesterday) as a Kerry adviser, surely this is something worth debating. *And if the missing memos say what Mr. Ashcroft has hinted they do, we can well understand why Mr. Berger would want to keep them in his trousers during a crucial election year.*


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## mhprecht (Oct 13, 2003)

I don't buy the "sloppiness" excuse. I deal with classified material every day in my position. The first thing that is drilled in your head is, "don't take classified material outside the office." There are signs on every exit warning against this.

I think it was most likely arrogance. He either thought he wouldn't get caught or he thought he was too important to be questioned about it if he was caught.


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## Bobm (Aug 26, 2003)

Its definitely a strange story the documents he took were copies so it wasn't preventing anything from being seen by the commission. The most beliveable theory I've heard is that it was to help Kerry focus his criticism of the anti-terrorism weaknesses in our system during his campaign to make Kerry look knowlegeable about something he isn't. I don't think it was anything related to spying. But it was obviously intentional and illegal and Sandy Berger was well aware of that. He should go to jail.


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## Bobm (Aug 26, 2003)

Heres another take on this story
"Former national security adviser Sandy Berger, the subject of a criminal investigation over the disappearance of terrorism documents, stepped aside on Tuesday as an informal adviser to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry," the Associated Press reports from Washington. The Berger scandal, dubbed *"Trousergate" * :lol: because of the claim that he stuffed classified documents into his pants, has led to much speculation as to why he purloined the papers.

Some Republicans, such as Pennsylvania's Sen. Rick Santorum, have suggested that he was spying for the Kerry campaign. We're surprised to find we agree with Josh Marshall that this is implausible. Andrew Sullivan, however, has a more believable theory. He notes this passage from a Washington Post report:

A government official with knowledge of the probe said Berger removed from archives files all five or six drafts of a critique of the government's response to the millennium terrorism threat, which he said was classified "codeword," *the government's highest level of document security.*
"Doesn't that sound like trying to cover your back?" asks Sullivan:

My best bet is that Berger was engaging in advance damage control--saving the drafts to help concoct a better defense of his tenure. *If so, it's classic Clinton era sleaze--not exactly terrible but cheesy subordination of national security for partisan political advantage.*

The Denver Post quotes Bill Clinton as expressing his amusement at the whole matter: "We were all laughing about it on the way over here," the ex-president says. "People who don't know him might find it hard to believe. But . . . all of us who've been in his office have always found him buried beneath papers."

The Associated Press reports that Ben Cohen, co-founder of the left-wing ice-cream purveyor Ben & Jerry's, "is on the road, towing a 12-foot-tall effigy of President Bush with fake flames shooting out of the pants." Maybe Sandy Berger should try on that outfit. :lol: :lol:


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## pointer99 (Jan 16, 2004)

well..... if those documents ended up in kerrys hands i hope he washed them afterward. :lol: :lol: :lol:

pointer


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## Mr. B (Mar 16, 2004)

Now now guys we should be giving this Democract some credit. He is at least trying to keep something in his pants.

Sorry I could not help it.


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## MSG Rude (Oct 6, 2003)

Mr. B,

:rollin:


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## Bobm (Aug 26, 2003)

All the President's Memos
Let's all see what Sandy Berger was trying to hide.

We've all had experience with the office Oscar Madison. Yet notwithstanding Bill Clinton's transparently insincere effort last week to laugh off the docs-in-socks scandal as a testament to Sandy Berger's sloppy ways--that Sandy!--the precision with which the former National Security Adviser zeroed in on one specific document in the National Archives suggests focus, not absentmindedness.
Which raises the obvious question: What was in that document that Mr. Berger so badly wanted to keep under his hat, er, trousers? The only way to answer that question is for the Justice Department to release it.

The 9/11 Commission report offers a tease. It records Mr. Berger's objections to at least four proposed attacks on al Qaeda between 1998 and 2000. A footnote on page 500 puts it this way: "In the margin next to Clarke's suggestion to attack al Qaeda facilities in the week before January 1, 2000, Berger wrote 'no.' "

The Clarke in that footnote, of course, is Richard Clarke. He is the author of the document Mr. Berger pinched from the archives, an after-action review of the Clinton Administration's response to al Qaeda's 1999 threats against the U.S. In his own testimony to the Commission, Attorney General John Ashcroft--who has the advantage of having read the document--says that in it Mr. Clarke attributes such success as the Clinton Administration had against al Qaeda to luck rather than skill.

That belies the public line taken by both Mr. Berger and Mr. Clarke, which is no small matter given how critical both have been about the Bush Administration these past few months. Certainly their own credibility is an issue, as is that of Mr. Clinton, who has also claimed that he told Mr. Bush how consumed he was with al Qaeda.

Still, the main public interest here has nothing to do with fixing blame on either Mr. Berger, Mr. Clarke or the Clinton Administration for what they did or did not do pre-9/11. *To the contrary, it has to do with the single largest question of this election: How America ought to respond to the terror threat.*
On Sunday, Commission Chairman Tom Kean said that Mr. Berger's padded hosiery did not affect the Commission's final report. Mr. Kean says he believes Commissioners had all the documents. The problem is this*: He has no way of knowing for certain what he might not have seen. *Remember, it was Mr. Berger who was assigned the task of selecting which documents--and which drafts of which documents with which marginal notations--to send up on behalf of the Clinton Administration.

Experience tells us that tiny differences in drafts can be critical. After all, the Iran-Contra case exploded when then-Assistant Attorney General Brad Reynolds discovered a paragraph in one draft of an Ollie North memo on diverting funds to the Contras. This was a paragraph that did not appear in other drafts of the same memo. *At the very least, given Mr. Berger's role as point man for the Clinton-era documents, Justice needs to assign someone to review his selections and ensure the integrity of a process he so grossly compromised.*

While this might mean nothing to Mr. Kean, surely it has some implications for voters in this election. The Bush Administration has been taking knocks for not having made al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden the priority Mr. Berger said it was during the Clinton years. Yet neither Attorney General Ashcroft nor National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice even saw this Clarke report until after the 9/11 terrorists had struck.
Perhaps if they had, America would have been on a more aggressive footing earlier on. At the least, releasing the Clarke after-action report now would provide better context for weighing such ongoing political accusations as the charge that the Bush Administration's concern about Iraq was simply a fantasy of a "neoconservative" cabal.

Toward that end we can't help but note page 134 of the Commission report, which documents a proposal early in 1999 to send a U-2 mission over Afghanistan to gather intelligence on where bin Laden was hiding out. Mr. Clarke objected on the grounds that Pakistani intelligence would tip bin Laden off that the U.S. was planning a bombing mission. "Armed with this knowledge," the Commission quotes Mr. Clarke as saying, "old wily Usama will likely boogie to Baghdad." *Is that the same secular Baghdad that we are told would never cooperate with Islamist al Qaeda?*

The entire justification for the highly contentious exercise known as the 9/11 Commission has been to provide Americans with a full accounting of that terrible day, let the chips fall where they may. Now we learn that Mr. Berger wanted to keep some of those chips hidden. *Whatever Mr. Berger's legal liabilities, the largest interest here is less what he did than why a sophisticated ex-National Security Adviser would do it. And for that we need to see what he was hiding*.


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