Sandy Stuff – Your- Pants Berger?
Over a time span of 16 months, from May 2002 until October 2003 Sandy Berger – Bill Clinton’s National Security Adviser – visited the National Archives in Washington D.C. to review highly classified documents in preparation for his testimony before the 9/11 Commission. But that’s not all he did. It is now known that on several occasions he absconded with top secret documents.
On his first visit, May 30, 2002, Berger viewed office files of White House terrorism adviser Richard Clarke.
On his second visit, July 18, 2003, Berger removed classified notes from the Archives.
On his third visit, Sept. 2, 2003, he removed a highly classified copy of the Millennium Alert After Action Review (MAAAR).The MAAAR was written after the arrest of Ahmed Ressan, who had planned acts of terrorism at Los Angeles International Airport on Dec. 31, 1999.
On his fourth visit, Oct. 2, 2003, Berger really outdid himself not just in what he removed but the brazen way he removed classified documents, classified notes and copies of e-mail documents.
This is when one of the archivists who had a very high level security clearance claims to have spotted Berger stuffing documents in his socks and pants! After casually walking out of the Archives building he surreptitiously hid the classified documents beneath a trailer in a construction area near the Archives building. Later he sneaked back and retrieved them.
But Berger’s audacious intrigues were not over. After retrieving the stolen documents he deliberately destroyed three of them by cutting them into small pieces with a pair of scissors and disposing of them in the trash at his office headquarters.
The extent of Berger’s theft of top secret “code word” documents, and the resulting damage done to the country’s national security may never be known. Code word documents are so highly classified that only a handful of people are ever allowed to view them.
https://www.foxnews.com/story/fox-news-special-report-socks-scissors-paper-the-sandy-berger-caper-questions-probe-of-theft-at-the-national-archives?msockid=29ffc22e05d76a053d6dd41604af6bd4
Other documents were identified by numbers but the individual pages were not numbered. To this day it remains unknown just how many documents Berger pilfered and probably destroyed.
https://web.archive.org/web/20090126235718/https://fas.org/irp/congress/2007_rpt/berger.pdf Page 3
In 2004, James Comey while serving as a Deputy Attorney General in the Justice Department was involved in the investigation of Berger telling reporters, “As a general matter, we take issues of classified information very seriously.”
http://www.wnd.com/2016/07/comey-has-long-history-of-clinton-related-cases/
Evidently in the case of Sandy Berger his offenses were not taken seriously when a clear-cut felony was plea bargained down to a misdemeanor. On April 1, 2005, Berger pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of intentionally removing documents from the National Archives and destroying some of them. He was fined $50,000, sentenced to 100 hours of community service and two years probation. Also, his national security license was stripped for two years.
http://www.wnd.com/2016/07/comey-has-long-history-of-clinton-related-cases/
Berger also admitted to lying to National Archive staffers when questioned about his outlandish behavior.
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/07/hillary_clinton_sandy_berger_in_drag.html
Also as part of his plea bargain Berger agreed to take a polygraph test.
https://www.wnd.com/2007/05/41496/
But that never happened. In a curt February 16, 2007 letter, Acting Assistant Atty. Gen. Richard Hertling dismissed a 60-page report by the Republican staff of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Affairs that demanded Berger be given the polygraph test he agreed to take in order to determine the extent of his theft of materials from the Archives. Hertling tersely stated,“We believe there are no facts that would justify a polygraph of Mr. Berger at this time.”
http://humanevents.com/2007/03/08/polygraph-berger-department-of-justice-investigation-incomplete/
This in spite of the fact the Berger agreed to submit to a polygraph test.
The conduct of the Justice Department while investigating Berger also drew this criticism:
The public statements of the former chief of the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, Noel Hillman, were incomplete and misleading. Because Berger had access to original documents [for which there were no copies and no inventory record] on May 30, 2002 and July 2003, there is no basis for the statement that “nothing was lost to the public or the process.”
https://web.archive.org/web/20090126235718/https://fas.org/irp/congress/2007_rpt/berger.pdf Page 5
But perhaps the most curious part of the whole sordid affair is what motivated Berger to go such extremes to jeopardize national security. What could have been important enough for Berger, a high-end lawyer who could demand outrageous legal fees, to risk public humiliation, disbarment, and prison? Was Berger doing this just for himself, for Bill Clinton, for both?
So much for Comey’s investigation of Sandy Berger, critical questions about what motivated Berger to make multiple visits to the National Archives over a time period of almost one and a half years and smuggle highly sensitive documents, sometimes by shoving them inside his pants, were never addressed. Even though Berger was required to take a polygraph test he was given a pass.
Was Sandy Berger grossly negligent when he stuffed highly sensitive documents inside his pants, smuggled them out of the National Archives headquarters and left them unattended underneath a trailer at a construction site?
Was Sandy Berger grossly negligent when he took a pair of scissors and destroyed highly sensitive material?
According to the “Public Integrity” section of the Justice Department the answer to both questions is a resounding “NO.”
It seems the Justice Department was more inclined to make excuses for Berger’s treacherous deceit rather than fully assess the damage that his malfeasance wrought. In the end the whole sordid affair was swept away with a sweetheart deal for Sandy Berger.
The Justice Department initially said Berger only stole copies of classified documents and not originals, but the House Government Reform Committee later revealed that an unsupervised Berger had been given access to highly classified files of original, uninventoried terrorism documents. During the House Government Reform Committee hearings, Nancy Kegan Smith — who was the director of the presidential documents staff at the National Archives and Records Administration — acknowledged that she had granted Berger access to original materials.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/20/AR2007022001344.html
Paul Brachfeld, inspector general of the National Archives and Records Administration prudently asked, “If he took papers out, these were unique records, and highly, highly classified. Had a document not been produced, who would have known?”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/20/AR2007022001344.html
Yes indeed who would have known? Since Berger is now deceased he apparently took the answer to that question to his grave.
– Mark Adams National Security Commentator