I had intended to avoid anything political for the holiday season, but then the Inspector General's report on Sandy Berger's theft of classified documents was released. (Frankly I question the timing.)

When it first became known that Berger removed and destroyed classified documents from the national archive, I never bought into the whole absent minded professor excuse that came from the Clinton camp - and Bill Clinton himself. However when Berger received his slap on the wrist, the story of him just being careless is the only thing that made sense. At least it was the only thing that made the sentence he received make sense.

And like most people, I like when things make sense. Particularly when it comes to crime and punishment. Now we learn that Berger's theft was not a careless accident, but a deliberate act. He deliberately took documents out of the archive, hid them under a trailer at a nearby construction site, retrieved them later, cut some of them into little pieces and threw them away.

Berger was in the archives preparing for testimony before the 9/11 Commission. He was reviewing documents detailing Clinton administration activity regarding terrorism. Quite clearly, there was something in those documents that Berger, and likely Clinton, did not want to be made public. We will probably never know for sure what Berger was trying to hide, but we can rather safely assume that it doesn't cast a good light on the Clinton anti-terrorism legacy.

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at 02:40 PM | No Comments | Add Comment