I heard an interesting item on the radio this morning. Apparently Sandy Berger is now an "informal, unpaid advisor" to the Hillary Clinton campaign. The campaign has stated that he "has no official role," but he has "valuable and welcome input that he is providing voluntarily." Reports are that the arrangement is similar to the one Berger had with John Kerry's 2004 Presidential campaign. You may not remember this, but Kerry severed ties with Berger when Berger was inconveniently caught stealing highly classified documents from the National Archives.
I don't want to take up a lot of room here describing the case. Internet search engines are wonderful things, and if you simply put in "Sandy Berger" + "National Archives" (I even did it for you) you'll find a wealth of information. Bottom line: In 2003, he stole highly secret documents from the National Archives - documents that were classified at what is known as "code word" level. That's one of the highest levels of secrecy we have. People who are authorized to remove those documents from the secure room in which they are kept have to do it in a locked case handcuffed to his or her wrist. (Yes, they actually do that - it's not just something you see in the movies.)
Berger not only took the documents, he admitted to destroying some of them. He also smuggled out his own handwritten notes that were supposed to have been examined and cleared before he could take them. Then he lied about the whole thing as long as he could. Finally, in 2005, he pleaded guilty to a single count of "unauthorized removal and retention of classifed material." He was fined $50,000 and sentenced to two years of probation and 100 hours of community service. Oh, and he lost his security clearance for three years. Yep, three years. As near as I can tell, that means that sometime in 2008, a man who stole highly classified documents from the National Archives will actually be eligible to get his security clearance back. What a great country, huh?
Now he's advising the Clinton campaign. Perhaps he's advising them on how double-standards work in Washington. I recall another legal case recently in which Scooter Libby was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison for lying to investigators in the investigation over the alleged "outing" of Valerie Plame. The Democrats and the media spun that case for all they were worth to try to build the perception that Libby, working on behalf of people higher up in the Bush administration, had "outed" Plame in retaliation for her husband's criticism of pre-war intelligence. But the fact is that very early on in the investigation, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald learned that Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was actually the first to leak Plame's name to the media - but Fitzgerald continued to pursue other people until he finally caught Libby in what is known in the legal biz as a "process crime." The court never determined - or even allowed any evidence - about whether Libby had actually violated the Intelligence Identites Protection Act, which prohibits revealing the identities of secret agents. Personally, I'm still scratching my head over (1) why Fitzgerald never brought any charges against Armitage, who actually committed the act that the whole investigation was supposed to be about, and (2) why Fitzgerald kept the investigation going when he already knew whodunit.
Scooter Libby: 2 1/2 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for what could have simply been a bad memory about who said what to whom and when, when the prosecutor already knew that he wasn't guilty of the crime the investigation was allegedly about. Sandy Berger: two years probation, 100 hours of community service, and a $50,000 fine for stealing and destroying highly classified documents from the National Archives. Somehow that doesn't add up to me.
The documents in question, by the way, were the "after action" reports on the thwarting of the "millennium bombing" plot of 1999/2000 - reports which some have claimed are highly critical of the counterterrorism efforts of the administration that at the time was being run by the husband of the candidate Sandy Berger is now advising. Heck, maybe he does have some valuable and welcome input, along the lines of, "Here's how not to do it, Mrs. Clinton."
I think there is a lesson to be learned here, though (besides the obvious one, I mean): If you're ever questioned under oath about exactly when you said or did something, regardless of how confident you are in your memory, the correct answer is, "I don't recall, counselor." Thanks for listening.
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