July 20, 2004

More on Berger

Label me confused. Of course, in an election year, it is not unusual for the spin to come so fast and furious, as to make things confusing, so I'm probably not alone.

Let's start with the facts: Berger admits to taking out documents 'accidentally' and then discarding some of them. There is a justice investigation on going.

Now for the rest.

Bush campaign spokesman Terry Holt said Berger's decision to leave the Kerry campaign "was appropriate, but there are still questions that remain."

"There are still a lot of questions about whether or not the Kerry campaign benefited from the information Berger took," Holt said.

Okay, how would this benefit Kerry? The documents were Clinton-era documents, and Berger was the Security Advisor. Were these documents which he did not have access to when he was ? I can't imagine that. And so, if he wanted to give Kerry's campaign information, he wouldn't need to steal it.


Let's also look at what he did. The news makes it seem like he was stuffing documents in various places with wild abandon.

Law enforcement sources said archive staff told FBI agents they saw Berger placing items in his jacket and pants, and one archive staffer told agents that Berger also placed something in his socks.

He adamantly denies the socks, but says he did place notes he was making at the time into his pants pockets and his jacket. See, he was reviewing the documents for his testimony. The problem with this is, that even note you make when reviewing classified documents, themselves have to be checked out, before they can leave the archives.

Now, there was also a document he took:

Sources said that among the documents Berger took were drafts of a Clinton administration "after-action" report on efforts to thwart the so-called "millennium plot," a suspected al Qaeda attack planned around the New Year's holiday in 1999.

Why did he take this one? His job was to filter through stacks of material, to decide what he felt the 9/11 panel needed to see, and what they didn't. He was separating them into two piles, relevant and not relevant.

Berger has told associates and his attorneys he deliberately set aside drafts of the millennium plot after-action report because it was a longer document and "he knew he needed to take some time on it," according to one adviser.

In Berger's account, after hours of reading documents, he inadvertently took the documents he had set aside to read later along with other materials and a leather portfolio he had carried into the screening room.


That seems a plausible explanation to me. The 9/11 commission says it's unlikely any of this would effect anything to do with the 9/11 report. Of course, some are not so convinced:

Rep. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, the Republican speaker of the House, said he was "profoundly troubled" by the probe and suggested Berger was trying to conceal damaging information from the 9/11 commission.

"What information could be so embarrassing that a man with decades of experience in handling classified documents would risk being caught pilfering our nation's most sensitive secrets? Did these documents detail simple negligence, or did they contain something more sinister?" Hastert asked a statement.

Sinister. Nice choice, but of course the 'hide something from the panel' cry is the weakest of all. (I'm not sure what Kerry would gain, but at least it seems to be a valid, if not reasonable, concern). Berger was the guy deciding what the 9/11 panel was going to see. He simply could have just put this document into the 'not relevant' folder, and be done with it. There was no need to steal it.

There is an investigation, and there should be, but the more info that comes out the more it looks like this is being hyped to turn attention from other, more important things....

Comments:
Posted by Henry at 06:13 AM || Link to me || Category:: Politics, Just Left on