BergerGate - Radio Islam

BergerGate

Sandy Berger, Zionist Jew and former National Security Adviser to U.S. Pres. Bill Clinton and informal adviser to Jewish Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign in 2004, is caught stealing top secret documents from the National Archives.

Below we reproduce some articles on "BergerGate", articles that illustrate the degree of deterioration of American society at the hands of Zionism and the simple criminal methods applied by the highest echelons of Zionist Power in the U.S..

The Springfield News-Leader Online Edition. Published July 22,2004:

Ex-security adviser reportedly told monitors to violate rules as he took breaks, took files

By James

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.

The same archives monitors told the FBI Berger was observed stuffing his socks with handwritten notes about files he reviewed that were going to the Sept. 11 panel. It is prohibited to make notes about the secret files and leave with them without special approval.

Berger's attorney, Lanny Breuer, has denied the allegation that Berger hid papers in his socks.

Fox News Thursday, July 22, 2004:

Berger: 'I Deeply Regret' an 'Honest Mistake'

WASHINGTON — Sandy Berger said he made "an honest mistake" but Republicans aren't completely buying that explanation.

The national security adviser under former President Bill Clinton's said he regrets the way he handled classified terrorism documents pertaining to the Sept. 11 commission. Berger told reporters he was not guilty of criminal wrongdoing.

"Last year, when I was in the Archives reviewing documents, I made an honest mistake. It's one that I deeply regret," Berger said late Tuesday. "I dealt with this issue in October 2003 fully and completely. Everything that I have done all along in this process has been for the purpose of aiding and supporting the work of the 9/11 commission, and any suggestion to the contrary is simply, absolutely wrong."

But the GOP says the whole snafu raises questions about whether Berger tried to hide embarrassing materials, since he was reportedly seen stuffing documents down his pants, shirt and in his socks.

"What information could be so embarrassing that a man with decades of experience in handling classified documents would risk being caught pilfering our nation's most sensitive secrets?" House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said. "Mr. Berger has a lot of explaining to do."

Others insist it's too early to draw conclusions about the controversy.

"I think it is very, very unfortunate that the matter came into public attention while it's under investigation," Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., told FOX News on Wednesday, adding that Berger is entitled to the presumption of innocence until proven otherwise. "Even if later on, someone is exonerated, you can never remove the stain."

"The timing is suspicious but not conclusive," he added.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Wednesday that the Justice Department notified the office of White House legal counsel Alberto Gonzalez about the probe before news of it leaked to the media Monday.

"My understanding is that this investigation has been going on for several months and that some officials in our counsel's office were contacted as part of the investigation," McClellan told reporters. "The counsel's office is the one that is coordinating with the Sept. 11 commission the production of documents and since this relates to some documents, the counsel's office was contacted as part of that investigation."

The Justice Department is investigating whether Berger committed a crime by removing from the National Archives copies of documents about the government's anti-terror efforts and notes that he took on those documents. Berger was reviewing the materials to help determine which Clinton administration documents to provide to the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

When news of the investigation surfaced, Berger on Tuesday quit as an informal adviser to Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign to limit the political fallout.

Kerry said later, "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 this campaign until this matter is resolved objectively and fairly."

House GOP Leader: 'Could Be a National Security Crisis'

Many Democrats, including former President Clinton himself, suggested that politics were behind disclosure of the probe only days before Thursday's scheduled release of the Sept. 11 commission report. That report is expected to be highly critical of the government's response to the growing Al Qaeda threat, a potential blow to President Bush's re-election campaign.

"It's interesting timing," Clinton said at a Denver autograph session for his book, "My Life." Berger served as national security adviser for all of Clinton's second term.

Berger and his lawyer, Lanny Breuer, said the former Clinton adviser knowingly removed the handwritten notes by placing them in his jacket and pants and inadvertently took copies of actual classified documents in a leather portfolio. He returned most of the documents, but some still are missing.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, told reporters the case was about theft and questioned a statement by Berger issued Monday attributing the removal of the documents and notes to sloppiness.

"I think it's gravely, gravely serious what he did, if he did it. It could be a national security crisis," DeLay said.

Asked to comment on that Wednesday, Breuer said he was "very disappointed with this reaction."

"It was an advertent mistake," he said on NBC's "Today" show. "All I can tell you is that when this matter started a year ago, I said to the Department of Justice that we were going to deal with this in good faith, that we wouldn't go to the press and that we wouldn't make this political .... and then suddenly, days before the 9/11 commission report comes out, this is leaked."

Kerry Letter Points Finger at Cheney, Gillespie

The Kerry campaign released a letter detailing campaign questions as to whether Vice President Dick Cheney and Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie orchestrated the Berger investigation leak.

The letter entitled "Cheney Strikes Back?" says: "The argument that the timing was politically motivated and coordinated by the White House was just made stronger by some very disturbing reports about Dick Cheney and Ed Gillespie."

It goes on to say Cheney and Gillespie reportedly were seen Tuesday meeting with those Senate Republicans who went on the record after the scandal broke, launching a "scurrilous effort to smear the Kerry campaign" by saying Berger gave Kerry port-security documents, the Democratic presidential campaign's letter states.

"If true, the fact that the White House has Cheney coordinating a political attack at a time when the 9/11 report is coming out with recommendations on how to improve the nation's security speaks volumes about the Bush approach to governing," the letter states.

The documents involved have been a key point of contention between the Clinton and Bush administrations on the question of who responded more forcefully to the threat of Al Qaeda terrorism. Written by former National Security Council aide Richard Clarke, they discuss the 1999 plot to attack U.S. millennium celebrations and offer more than two dozen recommendations for improving the response to Usama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network.

In his April 13 testimony to the Sept. 11 commission, Attorney General John Ashcroft said the review "warns the prior administration of a substantial Al Qaeda network" in the United States. Ashcroft said it also recommends such things as using tougher visa and border controls and prosecutions of immigration violations and minor criminal charges to disrupt terror cells.

"These are the same aggressive, often-criticized law enforcement tactics that we have unleashed for 31 months to stop another Al Qaeda attack," Ashcroft told the panel. He added that he never saw the documents before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Berger said in his March 23 testimony to the commission that Clinton submitted a $300 million supplemental budget to Congress to pay for implementing many of the documents' recommendations. Berger acknowledged, however, that not all of them were accomplished.

In his statement Monday, Berger said that every Clinton administration document requested by the Sept. 11 commission was provided to the panel. Berger also said he returned some classified documents and all his handwritten notes when he was asked about them, except for two or three copies of the millennium report that may have been thrown away.

Al Felzenberg, spokesman for the Sept. 11 commission, said the Berger investigation will have no bearing on the panel's report.

FOX News' Carl Cameron and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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.

But three days after the disclosure of the Berger investigation, many of the basic facts of the controversy remain unknown or are contested, as well as more subjective questions about how seriously his lapse should be regarded or its effect on politics this year.

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.

Berger has known for months that he was in potential jeopardy. Breuer was hired in October, and in January former White House press secretary Joe Lockhart was enlisted to remain on standby if a public controversy blossomed. But Berger allies said he did not inform Kerry because he had resolved to work privately with Justice Department officials, and received assurances that these officials would treat the matter confidentially.

The controversy is likely to continue, even after Berger relinquished his role as informal Kerry adviser on Tuesday. House Government Reform Committee Chairman Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) said yesterday that he plans an investigation.

"These allegations are deeply troubling, and it's our constitutional responsibility to find out what happened and why," Davis said in a statement. "It boggles the mind to imagine how a former national security advisor walked off with this kind of material in his pants, or wherever on his body he carried it. At best, we're looking at tremendously irresponsible handling of highly classified information -- some of which, I understand, has not yet been located."

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said that "a few individuals" in the White House counsel's office knew about the investigation before news reports.

There was bitterness among Berger allies this week in the timing of the disclosure and the wealth of detail -- inaccurate detail, they say -- about the allegations.

"This is a terrible experience for him, and he's embarrassed by his mistakes," Lockhart said, "but I think he also feels a sense of injustice that after building a reputation as a tireless defender of his country that many Republicans would try to assassinate his character to pursue their own ends."

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