Commentary on the News
Thursday, April 07, 2005
Jack Kinsella - Omega Letter Editor
When I first read the charges that former national security advisor Sandy Berger was caught stealing classified documents I thought to myself, "Wow! This will make Watergate look like a misdemeanor by comparison!"
I envisioned armies of Woodward and Bernstein wannabes, meeting in secret with Washington sources, trying to get to the bottom of it and see who was behind it all.
After all, all Watergate was, in reality, was a third rate burglary to bug the office of the Nixon's administration's political opponents. If the press had stopped inquiring at the burglar level, it would have been just another political dirty trick blamed on some overzealous, low-level campaign worker.
Woodward and Bernstein weren't content to stop at the burglar level, and the Watergate Investigation made them journalistic superstars, spawned endless movies and books, forced a sitting president to resign in disgrace, put an unelected Gerald Ford in the White House, and altered the course of US, and ultimately, world history.
Had Woodward and Bernstein not uncovered the ties to the White House, had they not 'followed the money' -- as 'Deep Throat' famously advised them, had the White House not been forced by their investigation to undertake the cover-up that ultimately brought down the Nixon presidency, 'Watergate' would be the name of a rather ordinary hotel in Washington DC with no particular historical significance.
The Sandy Berger theft case had that kind of historical potential. Consider the setting.
America is a nation at war. Sandy Berger is a former National Security Advisor to the President of the United States. Berger had been instructed by a former president of the United States to vett secret documents relative to wartime security as part of an official Congressional investigation into an enemy attack that killed thousands of US citizens. Berger was selected to vett them since it was under his watch that the attack was planned and prepared.
The 9/11 Commission was investigating how the worst wartime attack - ever -against US civilians in history was successfully perpetrated, plunging the nation into war. It is equal in historical significance to the Pearl Harbor Commission and its investigation of how America was pulled into World War Two.
Got all that? Now we add one of the nation's highest officials, caught stealing national security secrets relative to our wartime security and the 9/11 Commission's investigation of our wartime security. What set off alarms about the Watergate burglary to Woodward and Bernstein was the burglars themselves.
Viewed just as a routine burglary, the burglars had no discernible reason, apart from a political one, for committing it. They HAD to be working for someone higher up, reasoned Woodward and Bernstein, and because of that, 'Watergate' is now synonymous with an historical turning point in world history.
Sandy Berger had no discernible reason for stuffing classified documents into his socks and underwear. Sandy Berger has no particular political legacy to protect -- the National Security Advisor is an appointed post. Sandy Berger has no discernible political aspirations for high office -- in short, the burglar doesn't fit the crime.
But Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein are too old, now, to be Woodward and Bernstein. And no new Woodward and Bernstein showed up to ask why Sandy Berger would steal national security secrets by stuffing them in his socks and underwear.
Berger entered a guilty plea to a misdemeanor charge of taking classified material. He was fined $10,000 and barred from government service for the remainder of the Bush administration's term.
(Not that Bill Clinton's National Security Advisor would find much work in a Bush administration in the first place.)
No investigation. Nobody knows for sure what documents Berger stole. And since he didn't have to account for them all, nobody knows where they went. There is no way to know if Berger cut them up with scissors, as he said he did, (with no explanation) or if they ended up in the hands of some foreign enemy power?
We are, as I noted earlier, at war, and those documents were important enough to SOMEBODY for Sandy Berger to steal and shred them before Congress got a look at them. Shouldn't that have been of interest to somebody?
If not Woodward and Bernstein, maybe officials with the Department of Homeland Security? FBI? CIA? Department of Justice? The White House? Somebody???
Evidently not. Berger's motives were of such little consequence that he wasn't even forced to 'allocute' -- that is, to admit to the court that he committed a crime -- a common requirement in plea bargain agreements in which jail time is waived -- as any "Law and Order" fan can tell you.
Nobody questioned why Berger committed a crime that sixty years ago would have resulted in his execution for treason. What was his motive? What was he trying to hide?
It isn't unreasonable to assume, since he took such pains to cover up afterwards, that he was trying (and succeeding at) hiding SOMETHING. That's a big, unanswered 'what' to leave dangling in an investigation on an historical parallel with the Pearl Harbor Commission.
Then there is the dangling 'Who'? Whose interests was Sandy Berger protecting when he stole and shredded classified secret documents relative to wartime national security?
Who was he working for? For himself? For the Democrats? For Bill Clinton? For Hillary? Who? Evidently the answer is, "Who cares?"
Which brings us to the most perplexing question; 'Why?'
Why would the Bush administration, currently responsible for wartime national security, not care why Sandy Berger was stealing government secrets? Why wouldn't it insist on a full accounting of what was stolen? Why wouldn't it want to make sure it knew where those secrets ended up?
This is the most mysterious question surrounding the whole Sandy Berger affair. Why? It is difficult to imagine that, were it a former Republican official caught stealing documents from a wartime Democratic administration, the Democrats would participate in a cover up for either the official or his bosses.
It makes no sense for a Republican administration to give a former Clinton official a pass while Hillary Clinton is still a viable candidate for the White House.
Politically, Sandy Berger was a godsend that, for some reason, the Bush administration passed up. So did officials of the Republican Party and the mainstream media.
The inexplicable whitewash of Sandy Berger by the Bush Justice Department concluded with his guilty plea, and, even more inexplicably, the political potential of Berger's links to the Clintons go untouched by the administration, Republican strategists, or even the media. Something doesn't make sense.
Big time.
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May 30, 3:11 am my little girl was born.
Good article. Strange does not begin to describe this case, it's very unsettling how this has been swept under the rug & out of the media limelight.
This has not been swept under the rug and out of the media limelight, the media has simply chosen to ignore it. Fox news has even given it minimal coverage, there have been too many other 'Earth Shattering' events taking place for them to use precious air time to this minor incident. After all, this is a story of a politician doing what all politicians do best, steal things for their own private use and agrandizement.
I hold that politicians are members of one party or another only to allow the public some measure of comfort in that the 'loyal Opposition'
will be there to keep things straight while in reality, they share a common goal. That goal, simply stated, is to keep the citizens of this country under the thumb of the federal government by utilizing entitlement programs to such an extent that sooner or later, we will demand that they take over every aspect of our lives. The media has been a willing tool in that regard and will continue to keep people in the dark until it is too late.
In the job I work in, part of my training has to do with legal documentation that will fal under government auspices.
The training is very simple:
-If you lie on a document, you will go to prison.
-If you cover up an incident involving documented materials, you will go to prison.
-If you remove or destroy documents, you will go to prison.
I would think that this should go double for classified government documents.
Personal notes or not, removing them is a felony.
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Obamanfreude - 1. taking pleasure from the misfortunes of an Obama supporter as he or she is adversely affected by the policies of their Dear Leader.
In the job I work in, part of my training has to do with legal documentation that will fal under government auspices.
The training is very simple:
-If you lie on a document, you will go to prison.
-If you cover up an incident involving documented materials, you will go to prison.
-If you remove or destroy documents, you will go to prison.
The Strange Case of Sandy Berger
