Redstate

By Rick Moran Posted in National Security | Spotlight Blogs — Comments (11) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

He can't be prosecuted a second time thanks to the double jeopardy clause in the Constitution. But if half of what the Inspector General's report on Sandy Berger's escapades at the National Archives can be believed, the former National Security Advisor to President Clinton has a lot to answer for - if not to the law, then certainly to history and the American people.

Berger robbed the American people of the only thing owned by all of us; our shared experiences as a nation. His destruction of documents relating to the Millennium Plot will make that event a little less understandable, a little less clear when historians 50 years from now try and pick up the thread of all that transpired during that time.

Read on . . .

A small event in the sweep of history, yes. But no historical event exists as an island. What knowledge we lose from our incomplete picture of the response to the Millennium Plot ripples across other events and prevents us from fully understanding our past in a way that was entirely avoidable and largely without precedent.

From the Executive Summary of the Inspector General's report, we learn that it was not simply copies of the Millennium Plot After Action Report (MAAR) and "notes in the margins" that were stolen and destroyed as we were originally led to believe. In fact, the MAAR was an attachment to each document taken. There were four separate emails with the attachment, the contents of each not being revealed (for obvious reasons).

This information throws the entire Berger incident into a totally new light. Richard Minter of Pajamas Media, who has the PDF file of the IG report available for download:

What was role of Omar Bashir, President of the Sudan, and his relationship to Berger and President Clinton during the days when he offered to cooperate in the capture of Osama Bin Laden?

What was in the ten to twenty pages of notes Berger is believed to have taken out of the reviewing room against regulations during his first session?

Who was the person or persons Berger contacted during the numerous “private cell phone calls” he was allowed to make during his active review of the classified documents?

Exactly what was in the documents Berger stole from the archives, some of which he has confessed to destroying?

Did Berger have an accomplice? If the person on the other end of those phone conversations knew what he was doing, it would seem logical that he/she would be open to aiding and abetting a crime. There is nothing in the IG report that I can see where any attempt was made to discover who Berger was making all those phone calls to.

Minter speculated on air today that one of the documents removed and destroyed by Berger was a 1995 letter from Bashir to Clinton offering to hand Osama Bin Laden over to us. What would the 9/11 Commission have had to say about this? Would it have altered their final report?

Probably not, which makes these revelations perhaps more of an historical curiosity than anything else. I doubt whether it would have altered any perceptions by the American people about whose failures were responsible for 9/11 and how much blame should be assigned to both Clinton and President Bush. Al-Qaeda would not have disappeared even if we had gotten a hold of Bin Laden. And radical Islamists would have continued plotting against America regardless of his fate.

But none of this lessens the outrage we should feel against Berger. The man might not have to face a court of law again for the crime. But the government can certainly revisit his paltry 3 year national security clearance suspension. Given the facts of the case, there should be no reason why the government shouldn't make Mr. Berger permanently ineligible to review classified material.

And any Democratic presidential candidate who would use Mr. Berger as an advisor is opening themselves up to well deserved criticism for having such an untrustworthy person as an aide.

Berger should be banished to the outer darkness of the national security establishment for what he's done. Unfortunately, he will still pull down five figure speaking fees and be in demand as a lecturer and talking head on cable news shows. It is we, the American people who will be poorer for Mr. Berger's crimes - acts for which he has yet to show much remorse much less being shamed for what he's taken from all of us.