Sandy Berger Probed Over Terror Memos (stuffed in jacket, pants, SOCKS!)

[NHPolitico]

Oops, I accidentally and inadvertently and innocently put highly classified terrorism documents into my socks. Yeah, that's the ticket-- and my wife Morgan Fairchild!  This guy was our NSA? Holy sh!t what an idiot.[/b]

WASHINGTON — Former President Clinton's national security adviser [and Kerry campaign advisor] is under criminal investigation for taking highly classified terrorism documents that should have been turned over to the independent commission probing the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, FOX News has confirmed.

Sandy Berger is under scrutiny by the Justice Department  following the disappearance of documents he was reviewing at the National Archives.

Berger's home and office were searched earlier this year by FBI agents armed with warrants after the former Clinton adviser voluntarily returned some sensitive documents to the National Archives and admitted he also removed handwritten notes he had made while reviewing the sensitive documents.

However, some drafts of a sensitive after-action report on the Clinton administration's handling of Al Qaeda terror threats during the December 1999 millennium celebration are still missing, officials and lawyers said. Officials said the missing documents were highly classified also identify America's terror vulnerabilities at airports to seaports.

Berger and his lawyer said Monday night he knowingly removed the handwritten notes by placing them in his jacket, pants and socks, and also inadvertently took copies of actual classified documents in a leather portfolio.


"I deeply regret the sloppiness involved, but I had no intention of withholding documents from the commission, and to the contrary, to my knowledge, every document requested by the commission from the Clinton administration was produced," Berger said in a statement.

There are laws strictly governing the handling of classified information, including prohibiting unauthorized removal or release of such information.

Lanny Breuer, one of Berger's attorneys, said his client had offered to cooperate fully with the investigation but had not yet been interviewed by the FBI or prosecutors.

Berger served as Clinton's national security adviser for all of the president's second term and most recently has been informally advising Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. Clinton asked Berger last year to review and select the administration documents that would be turned over to the Sept. 11 commission.

'Inadvertent' Action?

The FBI searches of Berger's home and office occurred after National Archives employees said they believed they witnessed Berger placing documents in his clothing while reviewing sensitive Clinton administration papers and that some documents were missing.

Berger said he returned some classified documents that he found in his office and all of the handwritten notes he had taken from the secure room, but could not locate two or three copies of the millennium terror report.

"In the course of reviewing over several days thousands of pages of documents on behalf of the Clinton administration in connection with requests by the Sept. 11 commission, I inadvertently took a few documents from the Archives," Berger said.

"When I was informed by the Archives that there were documents missing, I immediately returned everything I had except for a few documents that I apparently had accidentally discarded."

Breuer said Berger believed he was looking at copies of the classified documents, not originals.

Government and congressional officials said no decision has been made on whether Berger should face criminal charges.

Although lawmakers didn't want to make a judgment call on Berger's fate until all the facts are known, they agreed that the situation doesn't look good for Berger, or even for Kerry.

"There's an ethic here -- that is of strict discipline, of not letting the fact you're working on a political campaign start to color your actions when it comes to national security," Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., told FOX News on Tuesday.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., called the news "surprising" and said that "unless we learn otherwise, I have to assume that what Sandy said was right -- that any removal of documents was inadvertent. But it is serious."

Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., said, "we need more information -- obviously the timing of it is not good" for Kerry.

"From now on, until the election, everything like this will have a spotlight put on it, examined very carefully," Lott continued.

More 'Innocent Than It Looks?'

David Gergen, who was an adviser to Clinton and worked with Berger for a time in the White House, said Tuesday, "I think it's more innocent than it looks."

"I have known Sandy Berger for a long time," Gergen said in a television interview. "He would never do anything to compromise the security of the United States." Gergen said he thought that "it is suspicious" that word of the investigation of Berger would emerge just as the Sept. 11 commission is about to release its report, since "this investigation started months ago."

Berger testified publicly at one of the commission's hearings about the Clinton administration's approach to fighting terrorism.

Berger had ordered his counterterrorism adviser, Richard Clarke, in early 2000 to write the after-action report and has publicly spoken about how the review brought to the forefront the realization that Al Qaeda had reached America's shores and required more attention.

The missing documents involve two or three draft versions of the report as it was being refined by the Clinton administration. The Archives is believed to have copies of some of the missing documents.

In the FBI search of his office, Berger also was found in possession of a small number of classified note cards containing his handwritten notes from the Middle East peace talks during the 1990s, but those are not a focal point of the current criminal probe, according to officials and lawyers.

Breuer said the Archives staff first raised concerns with Berger during an Oct. 2 review of documents that at least one copy of the post-millennium report he had reviewed earlier was missing. Berger was given a second copy that day, Breuer said.

Officials said Archive staff specially marked the documents and when the new copy and others disappeared, Archive officials called Clinton attorney Bruce Lindsey.

Berger immediately returned all the notes he had taken, and conducted a search and located two copies of the classified documents on a messy desk in his office, Breuer said. An Archives official came to Berger's home to collect those documents but Berger couldn't locate the other missing copies, the lawyer said.

Breuer said Berger was allowed to take handwritten notes but also knew that taking his own notes out of the secure reading room was a "technical violation of Archive procedures, but it is not all clear to us this represents a violation of the law."

Justice officials have informed the Sept. 11 commission of the Berger incident and the nature of the documents in case commissioners had any concerns, officials said. The commission is expected to release its final report on Thursday.

FOX News' Major Garrett, Liza Porteus, Anna Stolley and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

[NHPolitico]

SEN. JOHN KERRY: "Sandy Berger is my friend, and he has tirelessly served this nation with honor and distinction. I respect his decision to step aside as an adviser to the campaign until this matter is resolved objectively and fairly."

SEN. SAXBY CHAMBLISS: "Reportedly these documents are related to homeland security and then suddenly we see the Kerry campaign came forward with what may have been illegal documents. This is sensitive stuff and was a significant breach of security...Kerry knows better than to use these documents."

SEN. GORDON SMITH: "There is a curious connection between the removal of these documents and the Kerry press conference on port security..It's disappointing what people might do as they try and take the President down."

Here's a summary so far.
After Berger's first visit to the Archives the bureaucrats there discovered that material was missing. Bruce Lindsay was called and Berger returned some material (BTW, material the NA weren't aware were missing at that time rather than the material they knew were missing), but not all that was missing. Then on subsequent visits more material was missing (the material had been marked by the NA to catch him red-handed-- mark it at NA and then see the same mark at his home) and in surveillance it was found that he was stuffing material in his clothes. The FBI was contacted, and a grand jury is deciding if they want to indict him. Berger quit as an advisor to Kerry today.

[NHPolitico]

Sandy can be a guy's name?

Wasn't Annie's dog Sandy a boy dog?

[NHPolitico]

It's hard to tell right now what will come of this.

On one hand, CNN reports that Justice Department prosecutors have rejected several offers from former Berger's lawyer to resolve the eight-month long investigation. Two sources associated with the investigation told CNN that lawyer Lanny Breuer made a detailed statement of Berger's view of the facts at issue several months ago. According to the unnamed sources, Berger has offered to talk to the Justice Department about a resolution to the probe. Also Deputy Attorney General James Comey said today, "It is against the law for anyone to intentionally mishandle classified information, either by taking it to give to somebody else, or by mishandling in a way that is outside the regulations of government information....We take issues of classified information very, very seriously....It's our lifeblood to keep secrets. All felonies in the federal system bring with them the promise of jail time. That's all I can say about that."

-BUT-

CBS Chief White House Correspondent John Roberts reports Berger returned to the archives all but two of the documents - which he believes he accidentally threw away. An FBI search of his home in January turned up nothing. And late Tuesday, law enforcement sources say they don't expect charges to be filed.


So, who knows?

[NHPolitico]

No, the point is that it's in flux. Not that it's resolved in his favor.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

[NHPolitico]

Guards left Berger alone, sources say Ex-security adviser reportedly told monitors to violate rules as he took breaks, took files.

By James Gordon Meek

New York Daily News

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.

...

----------------------------------------------------

Archives Staff Was Suspicious of Berger
Why Documents Were Missing Is Disputed

By John F. Harris and Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, July 22, 2004; Page A06


Last Oct. 2, former Clinton national security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger stayed huddled over papers at the National Archives until 8 p.m.

What he did not know as he labored through that long Thursday was that the same Archives employees who were solicitously retrieving documents for him were also watching their important visitor with a suspicious eye.

After Berger's previous visit, in September, Archives officials believed documents were missing. This time, they specially coded the papers to more easily tell whether some disappeared, said government officials and legal sources familiar with the case.

The notion of one of Washington's most respected foreign policy figures being subjected to treatment that had at least a faint odor of a sting operation is a strange one. But the peculiarities -- and conflicting versions of events and possible motives -- were just then beginning in a case that this week bucked Berger out of an esteemed position as a leader of the Democratic government-in-waiting that had assembled around presidential nominee John F. Kerry.

As his attorneys tell it, Berger had no idea in October that documents were missing from the Archives, or that archivists suspected him in the disappearance. It was not until two days later, on Saturday, Oct. 4, that he was contacted by Archives employees who said that they were concerned about missing files, from his September and October visits. This call -- in Berger's version of the chronology, which is disputed in essential respects by a government official with knowledge of the investigation -- was made with a tone of concern, but not accusation.

Berger, his attorney Lanny Breuer said, checked his office and realized for the first time that he had walked out -- unintentionally, he says -- with important papers relating to the Clinton administration's efforts to combat terrorism.

Berger alerted Archives employees that evening to what he had found. The classified documents were sensitive enough that employees arrived on a Sunday morning to pick them up.

Several days later, after he had retained Breuer as counsel, Berger volunteered that he had also taken 40 to 50 pages of notes during three visits to the Archives beginning in July, the lawyer said. Berger turned the notes over to the Archives. He has acknowledged through attorneys that he knowingly did not show these papers to Archives officials for review before leaving -- a violation of Archives rules, but not one that he perceived as a serious security lapse.

By then, however, Archives officials had served notice that there were other documents missing. Despite searching his home and office, Berger could not find them. By January, the FBI had been brought in, and Berger found himself in a criminal investigation -- one that he chose not to tell Kerry's campaign about until this week.

...

A government official with knowledge of the investigation said Archives employees took action promptly after noticing a missing document in September. This official said an Archives employee called former White House deputy counsel Bruce Lindsey, who is former president Bill Clinton's liaison to the National Archives. The Archives employee said documents were missing and would have to be returned.

Under this version of events -- which Breuer denied -- documents were returned the following day from Berger's office to the Archives. Not included in these papers, the government official said, were any drafts of the document at the center of this week's controversy.

The documents that Berger has acknowledged taking -- some of which remain missing -- are different drafts of a January 2000 "after-action review" of how the government responded to terrorism plots at the turn of the millennium. The document was written by White House anti-terrorism coordinator Richard A. Clarke, at Berger's direction when he was in government.

Lindsey, now in private legal practice in Little Rock, did not return telephone and e-mail messages.

The government source said the Archives employees were deferential toward Berger, given his prominence, but were worried when he returned to view more documents on Oct. 2. They devised a coding system and marked the documents they knew Berger was interested in canvassing, and watched him carefully. They knew he was interested in all the versions of the millennium review, some of which bore handwritten notes from Clinton-era officials who had reviewed them. At one point an Archives employee even handed Berger a coded draft and asked whether he was sure he had seen it.

At the end of the day, Archives employees determined that that draft and all four or five other versions of the millennium memo had disappeared from the files, this source said.

This source and another government official said that archivists gave Berger use of a special room for reviewing the documents. He was examining the documents to recommend to the Bush administration which papers should be released to the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Archives spokeswoman Susan Cooper said that employees closely monitor anyone cleared to review classified presidential materials.

The contradictions over essential facts, such as when Berger was first alerted to missing documents, have characterized the controversy this week.

Sources have told The Washington Post, and other news organizations, that Berger was witnessed stuffing papers into his clothing. Through attorneys and spokesmen, Berger has denied doing that.

...

[NHPolitico]

A secure room would have only a secure telephone line.  Also, bringing in a cell phone would be strictly forbidden.  So there are a few questions:
1. Were these calls on a secure line, or on a cell phone (several rules were apparently bent/broken for Mr. Berger, so he might have had a cell)?
2. If it was a secure line, was it capable of calls to non-secure phones? (some are, some aren't)
3. Were the conversations recorded?
4. Who was he calling?

The main question is: what were in those documents.  I wished we could get that one answered.

[NHPolitico]

Supersoulty,

Check your e-mail.

Email me at elephunkadelic@yahoo.com and tell me what this is about, please.

[NHPolitico]

Mark,

Check your email.

I think you sent that to me instead.