Ol’ Sticky Fingers
By Ryan Walsh (04/05/05)
You could wave a hundred dollar bill in my face as an incentive, and I still couldn’t tell you what I had for breakfast two days ago.
But that’s just the way I and a lot of other people are. We forget things. So you can forgive yourself if you don’t remember last summer’s pseudo-scandal involving Sandy Berger and classified documents. Here’s a quick refresher:
In July of 2004, the Justice Department accused Sandy Berger, former national security adviser under Clinton, of stealing and destroying classified security documents from the National Archives in Maryland. Subsequently, Berger admitted to smuggling the documents out of the archives on two separate occasions by stuffing them in his jacket, pants, and briefcase, but he flatly denied that he had “intentionally” destroyed the highly sensitive material. He didn’t know what he had done with them, but whatever had happened was, in Berger’s words, “an honest mistake.”
On Capital Hill, Republicans were furious at what they saw as nothing short of an illegal political cover-up, while Democrats claimed that the Bush Administration had released the findings of the investigation only to deflect attention from the 9/11 Commission’s final report.
The press noted the story, the pundits debated it, and eventually the country, no doubt lacking the stomach to sustain yet another Clinton-related scandal, moved on.
That is, until a new development surfaced last Friday.
As part of an agreement with federal prosecutors, Berger pled guilty to one charge of a misdemeanor before a federal judge. According to the plea agreement, “The New York Times” writes, “He is expected to admit [during the sentencing process] that he intentionally removed copies of five classified documents, destroyed three and misled staff members at the National Archives when confronted about it.”
So, as it turns out, Berger hadn’t really “misplaced” the three classified documents. Instead, shielded by the comfy confines of his office, he had cut each one to shreds.
In typical cases like this, the guilty party is fined $100,000 and thrown in jail for a year. But not Sandy Burglar. According to the sweet deal he negotiated with the Justice Department, he’ll admit to a slip-up here and a slip-up there, pay a paltry $10,000 fine, and give up his security clearance for a few years.
Outrageous? I think so. Here are a few thoughts:
(1) That the Bush Department of Justice (DOJ) would award such generous terms to a crime this blatantly distasteful is a downright disgrace—a mockery of justice. As a percentage of personal wealth, I’ve paid bigger overdue-book fines to the school library than the fee Berger will have to pay for stealing and shredding some of the most protected documents in the government’s possession! The Berger-DOJ plea agreement serves as even further testimony to the notion that in the political and legal realms, the powerful protect each other.
(2) Why isn’t the entire press reporting what these documents contained and investigating why Berger would want them destroyed? They were all copies of a single “after-action” report filed in 2000, documenting the Clinton Administration’s efforts to prevent terrorist attacks around the time of the new-millennium celebrations. And considering that, as the Washington Post reported, “Berger's archives visit occurred as he was reviewing materials as a designated representative of the Clinton administration to the national commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks,” it certainly looks like Berger was attempting to manipulate the historical record to protect the reputation of himself or the Clinton team at large. If that wasn’t his intention, what was? Whatever the case, this story should be about ten times bigger than it is now.
(3) Copies of the “after-action” report still exist, so Berger probably wasn’t attempting to cover up the document’s explicit content. Did the copies he destroyed contain something the others did not? Perhaps they contained some rather unflattering notes written in the margins by none other than Mr. Berger. If not, then what made the copies he shredded unique?
This scandal is full of questions and short on public outrage. Only the press can change that.
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