A Meal of Berger

Everyone loves a mystery and the challenge of reconciling seemingly contradictory facts. This is what makes the recent investigation if Sandy Berger, the former National Security Advisor for President Bill Clinton, so intriguing. In preparation for his testimony before the commission investigating the 9/11 attacks and as the person vetting documents for the Clinton Administration, Berger was reviewing thousands of pages of documents at the National Archives.

The details of what happen remain murky, but a few things are clear to all. Berger admits to leaving "inadvertently" the National Archives with highly classified materials. He further concedes that some of the documents from the National Archives have been accidentally discarded. In addition, Berger admits that, in violation of laws on handling classified materials, he took hand-written notes from the material with him out of the National Archives. The matter is still under investigation. The mystery lies in the fact that none of the most obvious explanations of Berger's behavior appear entirely plausible.

Berger's explanation, that the entire mishap is a consequence of disheveled clumsiness, does not quite explain all the facts. First, as a National Security Advisor the treatment of highly classified material whose disclosure could harm national security, should have become second nature. Berger knew the rules about removing notes and admits that he deliberately took those notes with him. Moreover, if one or two pages of material unintentionally slipped into a brief case one time, the absent-minded professor excuse would be very believable. But the withdrawal of materials on separate occasions requires believing of Berger a level of incompetence inconsistent with the respect associates generally accord Berger. Moreover, the former CIA Director John Deutch, appointed by Clinton in 1995 was investigated when he mishandled data that he brought home. One would have expected that the incident would have made clear to Berger the seriousness of sloppy handling of classified material, even inadvertent mishandling.

Another report that argues against the inadvertent removal of material is that off all the documents that he reviewed, on both occasions he only removed versions of the Millennium Report, a review of the security measures implemented for the year 2000 celebration. Apparently, the report was critical of the Clinton Administration. The accidental remove of only versions of this document twice seems unlikely.

However, removing this report would not hide its conclusions. There were other copies of the report and it was review by the 9/11 Commission. So what was to be gained by Berger or even the Clinton Administration by removing a few copies of the document?

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