July 30, 2004

Berger from Both Sides

Winds of Change has a post up which discusses the serious threat of the security breach which was allowed to occur.

The Blogosphere has heavily covered Sandy Berger's security breach of the National Archives, and the many angles that the mainstream media and particularly the Washington Post and New York Times have avoided. Yet for all that there are no real evaluations of:
  1. How badly the National Archives screwed up the security of code letter secret documents;
  2. How badly the system of notification of security breaches was abused; and
  3. How badly Sandy Berger screwed over American national security. Cell phones are not secure, and Berger's security breach using a cell phone from a secure document vault is the kind of thing that could result in tens of thousands of preventable American civilian deaths if my worst fears bear out.
None of these issues are trivial - and unfortunately, the scenario for #3 isn't a big stretch.

Well, I'm not sure I buy that anything Berger did could lead to thousands of civilian American deaths, but I agree that (if the reports are true), there seemed to be significant lapses on both Berger's part as well as by the Archives Staff.

And pie over at Atrios has a post about a WSJ article that claims the investigation has shown that Berger didn't withhold anything from the 9/11 panels, nor are any original documents unaccounted for.

Archives spokeswoman Susan Cooper said officials there "are confident that there aren't any original documents missing in relation to this case." She said in most cases, Mr. Berger was given photocopies to review, and that in any event officials have accounted for all originals to which he had access.

Which suggests that, as has been claimed, Berger's actions were accidental and not part of some plot to give John Kerry some sort of edge, or hide some sort of Clinton embarrassment.

Comments:
Posted by Henry at 09:27 AM || Link to me || Category:: Politics, Just Left on