An Utter Joke

Sandy Berger is getting away with a slap on the wrist. No, wait, this barely qualifies as a slap on the wrist...

Samuel R. Berger, a national security adviser to President Bill Clinton, has agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge and give up his security clearance for three years for removing classified material from a government archive, the Justice Department and associates of Mr. Berger's said Thursday.

A respected figure in foreign policy circles for years, Mr. Berger has also agreed to pay a $10,000 fine as part of an agreement reached recently with the Justice Department after months of quiet negotiations, the associates said.

... The material involved a classified assessment of terrorist threats in 2000, which Mr. Berger was reviewing in his role as the Clinton administration's point man in providing material to the independent commission investigating the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Officials with the Archives and the Sept. 11 commission ultimately determined that despite the incident, the commission had access to all the material needed in its work.

When the issue surfaced last year, Mr. Berger insisted that he had removed the classified material inadvertently. But in the plea agreement reached with prosecutors, he is expected to admit that he intentionally removed copies of five classified documents, destroyed three and misled staff members at the National Archives when confronted about it, according to an associate of Mr. Berger's who is involved in his defense but who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the plea has not been formalized in court.

Let me say this -- Lanny Breuer, who's working as Berger's attorney is worth every cent he's getting paid.

Berger, based on what he will admit in the plea bargain, has done the following:

1. Stolen classified documents intentionally;
2. Destroyed some of the classified documents he stole;
3. Lied to officials about it when initially questioned; and
4. Lied to the press when the investigation started (and presumably denied the charges to investigators).

As someone pointed out to Instapundit, we sent Martha Stewart to jail for something very similar to #4, and that was in an insider trading case. This is a case dealing with national security, and Berger stays out of jail? If you think I'm making too big a deal out of this, look at the details, as per the Post...

The terms of Berger's agreement required him to acknowledge to the Justice Department the circumstances of the episode. Rather than misplacing or unintentionally throwing away three of the five copies he took from the archives, as the former national security adviser earlier maintained, he shredded them with a pair of scissors late one evening at the downtown offices of his international consulting business.

The document, written by former National Security Council terrorism expert Richard A. Clarke, was an "after-action review" prepared in early 2000 detailing the administration's actions to thwart terrorist attacks during the millennium celebration. It contained considerable discussion about the administration's awareness of the rising threat of attacks on U.S. soil.

Archives officials have said previously that Berger had copies only, and that no original documents were lost. It remains unclear whether Berger knew that, or why he destroyed three versions of a document but left two other versions intact. Officials have said the five versions were largely similar, but contained slight variations as the after-action report moved around different agencies of the executive branch.

He took scissors and destroyed classified documents! Great, we still have copies of the documents... but as Patrick Hynes noted to Instapundit, we don't know whether any handwritten comments appeared on the copies Berger destroyed. I guess we should note that the urban legend of Berger sticking documents in his socks has been debunked -- he apparently stuck them in his jacket pocket. So much better.

The punishment here is what's really outrageous. This man will spend no time in jail, pay $10,000 in fines and regain a security clearance in 2008. Excuse me for being disgusted, along with Jim Geraghty...

Will we be seeing any criticism of him from former President Clinton, Madeline Albright, Hillary, John Kerry, or any other prominent Democrat? Is the perception that this is no big deal, standard operating procedure for that White House, and is something to be swept under the rug?

Do any Democrats want to confront the unpleasant truths of how the Clinton White House handled terrorism?

Because there were some facts out there that were so damning, Sandy Berger was willing to break the law to make sure the public never saw them.

We may never know what those facts are. For that alone, Berger deserves a far stiffer punishment.