PrintDecember 21, 2006
DoJ's democRAT line
While the DoJ papered over Sandy Berger's theft and destruction of classified documents from the National Archives, classified documents then of interest to the 9/11 Commission, the judge in the case insisted on a stronger penalty than the DoJ prosecutors who were clearly sympathetic to Berger did, and today the Inspector General of the Archives blew the whistle on the DoJ and Berger's conduct :
A former national security adviser to President Clinton, Samuel Berger, stashed highly classified documents under a trailer in downtown Washington in order to evade detection by National Archives personnel, a government report released yesterday said. The report from the inspector-general for the National Archives, Paul Brachfeld, said Mr. Berger executed the cloak-and-dagger maneuver
At the time the news of his prosecution became public we noted that the press was remarkably incurious and that Berger and his pals in the Clinton coterie had obviously leaked the story to minimize its impact:
Now that the details have been made known and we have had a peep at the inside workings of the DoJ in another case, the Lewis Libby prosecution, I have more questions.
1) How did this plea deal came about in a Republican administration committed to eradicate leaking? and
2) How can the DoJ justify the contrast between Berger's treatment when he deliberately destroyed real classified information and obstructed the work of the 9/11 Commission and their treatment of Libby who it hounded even though they knew (and kept secret0 the fact that it was Armitage, not Libby, who leaked Plame's identity, information which even the prosevutor will not try to show was actually classified?.
2) How can the DoJ justify the contrast between Berger's treatment when he deliberately destroyed real classified information and obstructed the work of the 9/11 Commission and their treatment of Libby who it hounded even though they knew (and kept secret0 the fact that it was Armitage, not Libby, who leaked Plame's identity, information which even the prosevutor will not try to show was actually classified?.
A particularly telling detail was the bit in the news reports of Berger's treatment to the effect that DOJ sources insisted that "no original information" had been lost. That, of course, is simply the negative way of saying: All annotations to the original documents have been lost; we will never know for sure what the reactions of responsible members of the Clinton administration were to the contents of these highly important national security documents. Of course DOJ has always known this, as well as the significance of Berger's conduct So, what interest did the prosecutors have in minimizing the seriousness of Berger's crime--for crime it was, whatever the plea deal ultimately was? Or am I forgetting that the DOJ officials--the same ones who oversaw the start of Plamegate--have close ties to certain Democratic senators?
