The Parts Fitting Together To Form The Berger National Security Scandal

The Parts Come Together: The Berger National Security Scandal

December 20, 2006 Update

Berger purposefully went to the National Archives to take the documents in fall, 2003. He was preparing himself and Clinton administration witnesses for testimony to the September 11 Commission. Berger was authorized -- as the Clinton administration's representative -- to ensure that the commission got all required correct classified materials.

Berger has previously plead guilty to unlawfully removing and retaining classified documents. Over one year ago Berger was fined $50,000 and ordered to perform 100 hours of community service. He also was barred from access to classified material for three years.

Inspector General Paul Brachfeld reported that some National Archives employees spotted Berger fiddling and bending down with something white around his ankles. The report said that at the time the employees did not feel there was enough information to confront someone of Berger's stature. When Berger was confronted later by Archives officials about the missing documents, he lied stating that he did not take them.

Brachfeld reported that on one visit, Berger took a break to go outside without an escort while it was dark outside. "He headed toward a construction area. Mr. Berger looked up and down the street, up into the windows of the Archives and the DOJ, and did not see anyone." This was reported in notes prepared by the inspector general's office. According to the inspector general, Berger then slid the documents under a construction trailer. Berger acknowledged that he returned later to retrieve the documents from the construction area and returned with them to his office.

The inspector general's notes said, "He was aware of the risk he was taking." Berger then returned to the Archives building without fearing the documents would slip out of his pockets or that staff would notice that his pockets were bulging. The inspector general's notes said Berger had not been aware that Archives staff had been tracking the documents he was provided due to suspicions arising from previous visits when Berger was removing materials. The National Archive employees had made copies of some documents.

The Inspector General's report stated that in October 2003, an Archives official called Berger to discuss missing documents from his visit of two days earlier. The investigator's notes said, "Mr. Berger panicked because he realized he was caught." The notes indicated that Berger had "destroyed, cut into small pieces, three of the four documents. These were put in the trash." The notes further document the fact that after the trash had been picked up, Berger "tried to find the trash collector but had no luck."

There are significant portions of the inspector general's report that have been redacted in order to protect privacy or national security.

The stories below document the Berger Scandal.

Part One > > >

Fishy Cheesy Berger

Former Clinton administration National Security Advisor Sandy Berger removed highly classified

terrorism documents and handwritten notes from a secure reading room while preparing for his 9/11 Commission testimony. House Speaker Dennis Hastert's statement follows.

"I am profoundly troubled by allegations that former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger removed highly classified documents from the National Archives regarding the Clinton Administration's handling of terrorist attacks prior to the September 11th attacks.

What could those documents have said that drove Mr. Berger to remove them without authorization from a secure reading room for classified documents?

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? Was this a bungled attempt to rewrite history and keep critical information from the 9/11 Commission and potentially put their report under a cloud?

It is my understanding that Mr. Berger shoved this classified information into his clothing to smuggle them out of the National Archives. Press reports indicate that Archival staff became concerned when documents began to disappear and specifically marked additional documents to track them. A number of those documents also turned up missing.

Mr. Berger has a lot of explaining to do. He was given access to these documents to assist the 9/11 Commission, not hide information from them. The American people and the 9/11 families don't want cover-ups when it comes to the War on Terror. They want the truth. And so does the U.S. House of Representatives."

The investigation is ongoing. No decision has been made on whether Berger should face criminal charges. Officials said the missing documents were highly classified and included critical assessments of the Clinton administration's handling of the millennium terror threats and identification of America's vulnerabilities at airports and sea ports.

GlobalNewscast

Part Two > > >

Melting Cheese

July 21, 2004, By James Gordon Meek, New York Daily News

Guards Left Berger Alone

Ex-security adviser reportedly told monitors to violate rules as he took breaks & took files.

Washington - "Former national security adviser Sandy Berger repeatedly persuaded monitors assigned to watch him review top-secret documents to break the rules and leave him alone, sources said Wednesday. Berger, accused of smuggling some of the secret files out of the National Archives, got the monitors out of the high-security room by telling them he had to make sensitive phone calls. Guards were convinced to violate their own rules by stepping out of the secure room as he looked over documents and allegedly stashed some in his clothing, sources said.

"He was supposed to be monitored at all times but kept asking the monitor to leave so he could make private calls,"a senior law enforcement source told the Daily News. Berger also took "lots of bathroom breaks" that aroused some suspicion, the source added. It is standard procedure to constantly monitor anyone with a security clearance who examines the type of code-word classified files stored in the underground archives vault.

The same archive monitors told the FBI Berger was observed stuffing his socks with handwritten notes about files he reviewed that were going to the Sept. 11 panel. It is prohibited to make notes about the secret files and leave with them without special approval.

Berger's attorney, Lanny Breuer, has denied the allegation that Berger hid papers in his socks."

Separately, Congress is preparing its own investigation.

GlobalNewscast

Part Three > > >

Red-Handed

Documented by the New York Sun: "Look now to what the 9/11 report has to say about the man to whom President Clinton,

under attack by an independent counsel, delegated so much in respect of national security, Samuel "Sandy" Berger."

The report cites a 1998 meeting between Mr. Berger and the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, at which Mr. Tenet presented a plan to capture Osama bin Laden. “In his meeting with Tenet, Berger focused most, however, on the question of what was to be done with Bin Ladin if he were actually captured. He worried that the hard evidence against Bin Ladin was still skimpy and that there was a danger of snatching him and bringing him to the United States only to see him acquitted,” the report says, citing a May 1, 1998, Central Intelligence Agency memo summarizing the weekly meeting between Messrs. Berger and Tenet.

In June of 1999, another plan for action against Mr. bin Laden was on the table. The potential target was a Qaeda terrorist camp in Afghanistan known as Tarnak Farms. The commission report released yesterday cites Mr. Berger’s “handwritten notes on the meeting paper” referring to “the presence of 7 to 11 families in the Tarnak Farms facility, which could mean 60-65 casualties." According to the Berger notes, “if he responds, we’re blamed."

On December 4, 1999, the National Security Council’s counterterrorism coordinator, Richard Clarke, sent Mr. Berger a memo suggesting a strike in the last week of 1999 against Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. Reports the commission: “In the margin next to Clarke’s suggestion to attack Al Qaeda facilities in the week before January 1, 2000, Berger wrote, ‘no.’ ”

In August of 2000, Mr. Berger was presented with another possible plan for attacking Mr. bin Laden. This time, the plan would be based on aerial surveillance from a “Predator” drone. Reports the commission: “In the memo’s margin, Berger wrote that before considering action, ‘I will want more than verified location: we will need, at least, data on pattern of movements to provide some assurance he will remain in place.’ ”

In other words, according to the commission report, Mr. Berger was presented with plans to take action against the threat of Al Qaeda four separate times — Spring 1998, June 1999, December 1999, and August 2000. Each time, Mr. Berger was an obstacle to action. Had he been a little less reluctant to act, a little more open to taking pre-emptive action, maybe the 2,973 killed in the September 11, 2001, attacks would be alive today.

It really doesn’t matter now what was in the documents from the National Archives that Mr. Berger says he inadvertently misplaced. The evidence in the commission’s report yesterday is more than enough to embarrass him thoroughly. He is a hardworking, warm man with a wonderful family, but his background as a trade lawyer and his dovish, legalistic and political instincts made him, in retrospect, the tragically wrong man to be making national security decisions for America in wartime. That Senator Kerry had Mr. Berger as a campaign foreign policy adviser even before the archives scandal is enough to raise doubts about the senator’s judgment.

Neither Mr. Berger nor any other American is to blame for the deaths of Americans on September 11, 2001. The moral fault lies only with the terrorists, not with the victims. With the war still on, one can’t help but to ponder who might best defend the country going forward, and how." * * * End * * *

Separately: Officials of the National Archives are seriously concerned about Berger's removal of classified documents. They have since mandated new security measures governing review of sensitive material, including the installation of full-time surveillance cameras.

GlobalNewscast

Part Four > > >

Warnings Covered

Berger's Papers Bared A Translation Disaster
July 29, 2004, By Niles Lathem, NY Post Correspondent

"Urgent complaints that the FBI could not decipher bugged conversations between members of a Brooklyn mosque and Afghan terrorists because it lacked translators were included in the documents former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger removed from the National Archives, The Post has learned.

In the latest twist to the document scandal, investigators said the revelation about translators was among several criticisms of America’s ability to deal with the looming al Qaeda threat contained in the “after action” memo on the millennium terror plot that is at the center of the Berger probe.

Officials said an appeal to hire more translators familiar with Arabic, Pashto and other key “counter-terrorism” languages at the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency was among 29 proposals to tighten security contained in the report.

The report written by former White House counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke also warned of the presence of al Qaeda cells inside the United States. It urged increased surveillance of Arab students coming into the United States and called for increased security at U.S. ports and other points of entry, investigators said.

The Clinton administration is reported to have only adopted one of its proposals.

Government officials said the FBI had been conducting electronic surveillance of a mosque in Brooklyn frequented by Afghans in 1999 after developing information from the investigation of the U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa.

Sources said the FBI had “hours” of taped conversations between people associated with the unidentified mosque and suspected terrorist leaders.

But despite the potential intelligence value of the intercepted communications, stacks of tapes languished on the shelves at the FBI counter- terrorism center in downtown Manhattan because there were not enough translators.

The problem of the lack of capable translators persisted right up to the 9/11 attacks and has been frequently cited as a key weakness.

The FBI reported to Congress in January 2002 — two years after the Clarke memo to Berger — that it had backlogs of "thousands of un-reviewed and untranslated materials."

Berger, who stepped down as an adviser to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry’s campaign... has called the removal of the National Archives documents an honest mistake. He said he was taking notes to prepare for testimony before the 9/11 commission.

Congressional committees are investigating whether Berger's real interest may have been handwritten notes on the margins of each copy of the report. Those notes could potentially contain responses from Berger and other top Clinton aides to the memo's recommendations."

GlobalNewscast

Part Five

The Outcome

Berger's sentence was handed down on September 8, 2005. Enough time had passed to permit

his sentence to be a joke. At least joked about by anyone in his inner circle.

US Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson handed Berger a $50,000 fine for having illegally taken classified documents from the National Archives. Berger avoids prison time but he is forced to surrender access to classified government materials for three years.

Berger stood before the magistrate and expressed remorse for his crime. He described it as a lapse of judgment that came while he was preparing to testify before the September 11 Commission.

Berger said, I let considerations of personal convenience override clear rules of handling classified material... I believe this lapse, serious as it is, does not reflect the character of myself. In this case, I failed. I will not again."

The sentencing hearing was the finale in a series of events in which Berger admitted to sneaking classified documents out of the Archives in his suit, later destroying some of them in his office and then lying about it.

Berger initially said he made an "honest mistake." In April he plead guilty to a misdemeanor of unauthorized removal and retention of classified material, which contained information relating to terror threats in the United States during the 2000 millennium celebration.

No one died when Clinton lied. But America rotted a little further.

GlobalNewscast

October 9, 2005 Footnote

Once responsible for US national security, Berger continues his irresponsible behavior pattern.

Bill Clinton's former national security adviser, Sandy Berger, was accused of reckless driving in Virginia. Police said he was traveling 88 mph in a 55 mph zone. This was just two days after he had been placed on probation for taking classified documents. The traffic offense occurred while Berger is serving a two-year probation handed down as part of his sentence in the document case chronicled below.

He was stopped on September 10, 2005. Two days later he informed the probation office of the US District Court that he had been speeding because he was late to a meeting and was unaware of how fast he was traveling. Berger had been heading east on Interstate 66, a major highway into Washington.

Berger is scheduled to appear October 18, in local traffic court in Fairfax County, Virginia, on the reckless driving ticket.

Berger appeared before the same federal magistrate who had sentenced him in the stolen documents case. Deborah Robinson admonished Berger. She said she will eventually decide whether to punish him further.

The probation office "reiterated to Mr. Berger" that all violations of the law and probation are taken seriously. The probation office filed a two-page report with the federal magistrate.

GlobalNewscast