If Sandy Berger were a Republican...

Posted by: Bill of Right
on April 05, 2005 @ 09:29 AM EST

The Washington Times can certainly come across as an RNC mouthpiece but its editorial today regarding Sandy Berger is a must-read, particularly since its "mainstream" cohorts have troubled to ignore the story. Noting Berger's slap-on-the-wrist sentence, the editorial goes on to point out why Berger's deliberate removal and destruction of top secret documents is so troublesome: MORE


The document, an "after-action" memo on the millennium 2000 terror plot authored by terrorism expert Richard Clarke, is so highly classified that any person removing it from secure rooms must do so in a case handcuffed to his or her wrist....

What was Mr. Berger doing with the documents? And why did he destroy only three? The likeliest answer is that he sought to conceal comments he or other Clinton administration officials wrote on them when they were circulating in January 2000. He couldn't have been trying to erase the document itself from the record, since copies besides the five exist elsewhere. What's likelier is that jottings in the margins of the three copies he destroyed bore telling indications of the Clinton administration's approach to terrorism. Mr. Clarke's document reportedly criticizes the Clinton administration's handling of the millennial plots and mostly attributes the apprehension of a would-be bomber headed for Los Angeles International Airport to luck and an alert official.

Powerline's John Hinderaker agrees: "Key documents relating to our government's inadequate reaction to the threat of Islamic terrorism prior to Sept. 11 are now gone forever, successfully purged from the historical record by one of Bill Clinton's most loyal servants. This plea bargain appears, on its face, to be a disgrace."

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