Uh-oh. Someone needs to check Sandy Berger’s sock drawer. ASAP:

Federal authorities are investigating the disappearance of a computer disc from the National Archives containing Social Security numbers and Secret Service procedures from former President Bill Clinton’s administration, congressional officials said.

Among the files on the disc were 100,000 Social Security numbers, including that of one of former Vice President Al Gore’s daughters, contact information for officials who served in the Clinton administration, logs of events and “other highly-sensitive information,” according to a statement from the office of Representative Darrell Issa, the ranking Republican on the House Overnight and Government Reform Committee.

“The full extent of the contents of the drive is still being investigated,” the statement said.

Democratic Representative Edolphus Towns of New York, chairman of the committee, called it a “serious security breach.”

The disc was lost sometime between October 2008 and March 2009 and a criminal probe is underway by the Archives inspector general and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Susan Cooper, director of communications for the Archives, said the loss was confirmed in early April and the inspector general immediately began a criminal investigation.

The Archives also “immediately undertook a review of our internal controls and we have implemented improved security processes,” Cooper said in a statement.

Issa has more here.

Jerry Seper at the WashTimes reports:

Samuel R. Berger, the Clinton White House national security adviser who was caught taking highly classified documents from the National Archives, has agreed to forfeit his license to practice law.

In a written statement issued by Larry Breuer, Mr. Berger’s attorney, the former national security adviser said he pleaded guilty in the Justice Department investigation, accepted the penalties sought by the department and recognized that his law license would be affected.

“I have decided to voluntarily relinquish my license,” he said. “While I derived great satisfaction from years of practicing law, I have not done so for 15 years and do not envision returning to the profession. I am very sorry for what I did, and I deeply apologize.”

Uh-huh. The real reason he gave it up?

In giving up his license, Mr. Berger avoids being cross-examined by the Board on Bar Counsel, where he risked further disclosure of specific details of his theft.

***

Previous Berg(l)er blogging:

Putting Sandy Berger to the test
Where Sandy socked the docs
Sandy Berger: Guilty
Berger and a side order of lies
Berger’s “copies”
Ground turkey Berger
Sandy Berg(l)er?

As the FNC story points out, the document-filching Clinton aide did agree to take a polygraph test as part of a plea deal reached in September 2005. Now, some GOP lawmakers want to know why the Justice Department won’t follow through:

The Justice Department should administer a polygraph test to former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger to find out what documents he took from the National Archives in 2002 and 2003, Rep. Tom Davis wrote in a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales dated Monday.

Davis, ranking Republican on the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, is leading a group of 18 lawmakers who say the Justice Department has been “remarkably incurious” about Berger’s decision to remove documents relating to the Sept. 11 commission’s inquiry into his role in helping prevent terror attacks during the Clinton administration.

“It is extraordinarily important that the Justice Department avail itself of its rights under the plea agreement and administer a polygraph examination to Mr. Berger to question him about the extent of his thievery. This may be the only way for anyone to know whether Mr. Berger denied the 9/11 commission and the public the complete account of the Clinton administration’s actions or inactions during the lead up to the terrorist attacks on the United States,” Davis wrote.

Makes sense to me. So what’s the hold up, DOJ?

Photoshop: Shieldsnet

***
Previous:

Where Sandy socked the docs
Sandy Berger: Guilty
Berger and a side order of lies
Berger’s “copies”
Ground turkey Berger
Sandy Berg(l)er?

Under a trailer. Oh, my:

Former national security adviser Sandy Berger removed classified documents from the National Archives in 2003 and hid them under a construction trailer, the Archives inspector general reported Wednesday.

The report was issued more than a year after Berger pleaded guilty and received a criminal sentence for removal of the documents.

Inspector General Paul Brachfeld reported that when Berger was confronted by Archives officials about the missing documents, he said it was possible he threw them in his office trash.

The report said that when Archives employees first suspected that Berger – who had been President Clinton’s national security adviser – was removing classified documents from the Archives in the fall of 2003, they failed to notify any law enforcement agency.

Berger, who pleaded guilty to unlawfully removing and retaining classified documents, was fined $50,000, ordered to perform 100 hours of community service and was barred from access to classified material for three years.

The report said that when Berger was reviewing the classified documents in the Archives building a few blocks from the Capitol, employees saw him bending down and fiddling with something white, which could have been paper, around his ankle.

However, Archives employees did not feel at the time there was enough information to confront someone of Berger’s stature, the report said.

Brachfeld reported that on one visit, Berger took a break to go outside without an escort.

“In total, during this visit, he removed four documents … .

“Mr. Berger said he placed the documents under a trailer in an accessible construction area outside Archives 1 (the main Archives building).”

***
Previous:

Sandy Berger: Guilty
Berger and a side order of lies
Berger’s “copies”
Ground turkey Berger
Sandy Berg(l)er?

Remember that “viewer discretion is advised” post I did on Friday featuring TS’s mock warning slate for ABC?

Allah captured the real-life slate ABC aired before “Path to 9/11″ began this evening. Click for the vid and live comment thread. More to come:

Running commentary from Glenn Reynolds and Austin Bay.

Betsy Newmark says it’s time to remember Sandy Berger, the Clintonistas, and their Dem enablers:

Think for a moment about the concerted action by Democrats, their lawyers, former White House operatives, Bill Clinton, sympathetic historians, and lefty bloggers to stop this show. Remember that this was the same crowd that was full of praise of for Fahrenheit 9/11 for crystallizing their opposition to George Bush. Accuracy and versimilitude didn’t bother them then. And they weren’t saying a word about 60 Minutes “fake but accurate” story on Bush’s National Guard service. Now, ask yourself. If this crowd were to control the White House, how many more of these attempts to stifle any criticism of them would we be seeing? Think of how much has been aired during Bush’s tenure, even a movie depicting him being assassinated and
more denials of civil liberties gets made without Bush’s White House unleashing its lawyers. But, for this thing, the Democrats go to the mattresses. Are they perhaps modeling for us what their response would be to further criticism if they should gain control of the White House – or even of Congress? Don’t forget those not-so-veiled threats to ABC’s license. Ponder that chill wind.

Ed Driscoll has more.

940pm-ish: Another advisory slate.

954pm EST: Well, at least ABC kept the Clinton “I did not have sex with that woman” soundbite in.

957pm: Quip of the hour. “Are there any men left in Washington? Or are they all cowards?”

The Berger scene was cut. Still, as HA commenters are noting, it’s all still fairly damning and damningly fair treatment of the Clinton administration.

1025pm: Customs agent hero Diana Dean is depicted stopping LAX bomb plotter ahmed Ressam at the US-Canadian border. Background here.

***

Allah’s got the side-by-side video comparison. Click to watch:

From the nutroots in full-blown Rove Derangement Syndrome mode…

To the top of the Democratic Party…

…the protests against ABC’s 9/11 docu-drama, “Path to 9/11,” have become completely unhinged.

The Ostroy Report says this morning:

In a story in Friday’s New York Times, former Governor of New Jersey and co-chair of the federal 9/11 Commission, Thomas H. Kean, said he was surprised by the current outrage over ABC’s plan to air the controversial “The Path to 9/11″ docudrama Sunday and Monday, on which he served as a consultant, because former President Bill Clinton had spoken directly with Disney CEO & President Robert Iger about the film last week. This is a startling revelation, and it comes just a day after we exclusively reported that the two men had spoken and that Iger agreed to Clinton’s edit requests.

Hugh Hewitt reports:

“The Path to 9/11″ is a superb condensing of the American non-response to terrorism’s growing threat beginning with the bungled surveillance of the first World Trade Center bombers right through the devastating attacks of 9/11. I spent most of yesterday’s three hour program with the program’s writer/producer Cyrus Nowrasteh, and no serious observer could listen to this interview and conclude that the movie is other than a deeply serious attempt to recount the events leading to the massacre of five years ago, primarily through the eyes of John O’Neill, the FBI agent who had taken over security at the World Trade Center just weeks prior to the attack and whose actions that day are believed to have saved thousans of lives.

For the Clinton team to demand cancelation or edits of the movie is to once again see them elevate their own pesonal vanity above every other interest, especially over the interests of John O’Neill and th emany other public servants who saw the threat clearly and did their best to stop it. The objections of various Clinton-era figures –Berger rightly argues he didn’t hang up a phone in one scene, for example– are absurd complaints about the tiny details used to compress eight years and eight months into five hours of drama. From these complaints they have built a tissue-thin demand for an Orwellian memory-hole moment.

…There is no reasonable case to be made that the film distorts history or slanders public figures in any significant way.

(“The Path to 9/11″ doesn’t even raise the most damning charge made against Clinton –that he fumbled an Osama hand-0ff from Sudan.)

If ABC caves to the vanity of Bill Clinton and his band of defenders, the network can give up any claim to being other than an extension of the DNC. That it would consider doing so over such a powerful film on so important a subject on such a meaningful pair of days is hard to imagine. Those who are urging the network to do so are disgracing themselves, not the picture or its makers.

Hugh also takes on the left’s faulty Reagan biopic analogy.

Allah has a reminder of a true-life Clinton bungle on Osama that didn’t make it into the movie, but should have:


Missed opportunity

Bryan Preston remembers the Stolen Honor fiasco and has a prediction:

Sinclair Broadcasting owns 62 local TV stations around the country. It planned to air Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal on about 40 of them in October 2004. That would be right before the presidential election. But the Kerry campaign got wind of it and threatened Sinclair that its licenses might be in jeopardy if it aired the doc and Kerry happened to win.

The polls were close, so Sinclair caved. It ended up airing just a few minutes of Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal inside a bromide wrapper.

I’m of the opinion that ABC will likewise cave, Friday evening.

The Democrats will have stomped on the First Amendment, again, just ahead of a national election. Like the man said in A Few Good Men, they just can’t handle the truth.

Contact ABC here.

***

Podhoretz has a slightly different take:

Does the movie misrepresent events, conversations and policies of the Clinton administration?

Yes and no.

Ex-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s anger is unquestionably justified. The version that I saw has her self-righteously owning up to actions that effectively tipped off Osama bin Laden to a strike against his Afghan training camp. “We had to inform the Pakistanis,” the movie’s Albright insists.

The real Albright says she neither did nor said such a thing and that the meeting we see in the movie never took place. The 9/11 Commission report, on which the film is partly based, says it was a senior military official who told the Pakistanis.

The portrait of Albright is an unacceptable revision of recent history and an unfair mark on a public servant who, no matter her shortcomings, doesn’t deserve to be remembered by millions of Americans as the inadvertent (and truculent) savior of Osama bin Laden.

Samuel Berger, Clinton’s national security adviser, also seems to have just cause for complaint. The version of the film I saw portrays him as having ruined the CIA’s one clear shot at bin Laden himself.

“Do we have clearance” to shoot, the CIA asks Berger, with Osama in their sights, and Berger responds, “I don’t have that authority.” That scene never took place in real life. The imputation that an actual living person named Sandy Berger refused to give a specific OK to an operation that would have put an end to Osama bin Laden three years before 9/11 is a libel.

If, as reported, ABC has revised that scene to conform more closely to reality, the network has done the right thing.

The one person who has no grounds for complaint is Bill Clinton himself.

“The Path to 9/11″ gives the impression that, as president, Clinton never took bin Laden’s declaration of war against the United States and the West seriously enough. And that is simply the unvarnished, undeniable truth.

Still, even here “The Path to 9/11″ gets it wrong. The real truth about the failures of the U.S. government under both Clinton and Bush is not, as “The Path to 9/11″ would have it, that the diabolical nature of the al Qaeda threat was obvious and unmistakable and that it was ignored by fools, charlatans and other downright unpleasant people who refused to listen to the Few Who Knew the Truth (meaning the late FBI official John O’Neill and that legend in his own mind, former counterterrorism official Richard Clarke).

The simple fact of the matter is that, with a million other things going on all at once – all of which seemed more pressing at the time, the threat went uncomprehended.

Pam at Blogmeister USA remembers John Kerry’s words:

John Kerry said the following about Republicans earlier this year, but he may as well be talking about his own party today:

America has always been stronger when we have not only proclaimed free speech, but listened to it. Yes, in every war, there have been those who demand suppression and silencing. And although no one is being jailed today for speaking out against the war in Iraq, the spirit of intolerance for dissent has risen steadily, and the habit of labeling dissenters as unpatriotic has become the common currency of the politicians currently running our country.

Dismissing dissent is not only wrong, but dangerous when America’s leadership is unwilling to admit mistakes, unwilling to engage in honest discussion of the nation’s direction, and unwilling to hold itself accountable for the consequences of decisions made without genuine disclosure, or genuine debate.

The word of the day, the book of the day, from David Limbaugh:

Says it all.

***

Justin Levine at Patterico’s has been all over the story. Read this thorough post referencing the 9/11 Commission report and see also the podcast he recommends from KFI’s John Ziegler. Patterico notes the LA Times’ overlooking of Dem thuggery against ABC.

Sen. Tom Coburn moves to defund the bridge to nowhere. The Club for Growth has details.

Maryland Lt. Gov Michael Steele will announce his Senate plans next week. Stay tuned.

Bill Nienhuis is blogging from Dachau.

Bloggers are keeping an eye on Muslim radicals in Trinidad.

Rush Limbaugh made a rare TV appearance on Hannity and Colmes.

Paul Cella interviews Andrew Bostom on the legacy of Jihad.

Eric at Classical Values on skepticism vs. conspiracy.

In response to yesterday’s post on Berkeley, the “birthplace of the Free Speech Movement,” Steven Den Beste e-mails:

Since when is Berkeley the “birthplace of the Free Speech Movement”? I was under the impression that started with the people who pushed to get the First Amendment ratified, way back in 1790.

Have I missed something here?

Then head over to Captain’s Quarters, where Ed Morrissey has created a new category for his invaluable posts on the subject. Tom Maguire is posting aplenty, and provides a “Skeptic’s Corner” on the story.

The Corner has running commentary from John Podhoretz, Andy McCarthy, et al.

Dinocrat reviews the cover-ups and lies.

Former intelligence officer Captain V notes there are plenty of dots and blame to go around.

Scott Johnson at Power Line has a good round-up. Scott points to Deborah Orin’s NYPost article, “Commission Cover-up?” putting the heat on Jamie Gorelick:

Commission staffers at first denied knowing about the elite military unit known as Able Danger, but later admitted they were briefed — twice — and Atta was specifically named. Still, it was conveniently left out of the 9/11 report.

It gets worse. Gorelick’s defenders might argue that hindsight is 20-20. But that excuse doesn’t work in this case, because she was warned way back then — when the see-no-evil wall was created.

That warning came right from the front line in the War on Terror — from Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White, who headed up key terror probes like the prosecutions for the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993.

White — herself a Clinton appointee — wrote directly to Reno that the wall was a big mistake.

“It is hard to be totally comfortable with instructions to the FBI prohibiting contact with the United States Attorney’s Offices when such prohibitions are not legally required,” White wrote on June 13, 1995.

“The most effective way to combat terrorism is with as few labels and walls as possible so that wherever permissible, the right and left hands are communicating.”

That memo surfaced during the 9/11 hearings. But The Post has learned that White was so upset that she bitterly protested with another memo — a scathing one — after Reno and Gorelick refused to tear down the wall.

With eerie foresight, White warned that the Reno-Gorelick wall hindered law enforcement and could cost lives, according to sources familiar with the memo — which is still secret.

The 9/11 Commission got that White memo, The Post was told — but omitted any mention of it from its much-publicized report. Nor does the report include the transcript of its staff interview with White.

White yesterday declined comment via spokesman Marvin Smilon. The 9/11 Commission spokesman, Al Felzenberg, didn’t respond to repeated phone calls.

Streiff at Red State sheds light on Able Danger, Mohammed Atta, and Prague.

The 9/11 Commission staff is headed over to the National Archives to “retrieve their notes on a U.S. military unit’s information that four of the Sept. 11, 2001 hijackers were inside the United States a year before the attacks,” according to FOX News.

Like Jim Geraghty says, somebody make sure to check the staffers’ coats and socks before they leave.

On a serious note, this panel simply cannot be entrusted to investigate itself. Conflicts of interest are rife. Incompetence is high. Congress needs to step in pronto. The Sarasota Herald Tribune sums up the case.

***
Update: Andy McCarthy zeroes in…

It is reported that this Atta information may have been developed as early as 1999. If that turns out to be true, think about what that means. The Democrats on the Commission (especially Gorelick and BenVeniste), through well coached witnesses like Richard Clarke, told us again and again that in the run up to the Millennium bombing, President Clinton demanded that his entire administration hierarchy be at “battle stations” – poring over all the intelligence, demanding answers from the intelligence community about any and all information so that nothing was missed. That is the well-oiled counterterrorism machine they used the Commission investigation to project. (Transparently, the intimation by the Commission Dems was that the Bush hierarchy was comparatively asleep at the switch in the months before 9/11.)

Well, ok, what did those at battle stations do about the Atta information?

And did the Commission know about the Atta information when it allowed its melodramatic public hearings to be used in this fashion?

The Millennium bombing plot against LA Int’l Airport occurred in late 1999 and confirmed that militant Islam was bent on striking the American homeland. What was done at that time about the Atta information?

In October 2000, the U.S.S. Cole was bombed in Yemen, killing 17 U.S. sailors. This reaffirmed that al Qaeda was operating through cells and bent on killing Americans anywhere. What was done at that time about the Atta information?

Given this turn in 9/11 Commission events, it is again worth asking: Why has the public not been told at this point what was in the classified documents that Clinton National Security Adviser Sandy Berger illegally pilfered from the archives during preparation for his Commission testimony (as well as President Clinton’s) – some of which he destroyed (although there are said to be other copies)? The 9/11 inquiry was said to be so significant to the public’s understanding of intelligence failure that the Commissioners famously forced a Presidential Daily Briefing from the CIA (one of the most sensitive documents generated by government) to be declassified and unsealed so that Bush’s National Security Adviser, Condi Rice, could be asked about it publicly. Why haven’t we been able to see for ourselves what Berger took?

Just asking.

Update: Lots of great work at The Strata-Sphere.

***

Previous:

9/11 Commission ignored key facts on hjackers

-AIPAC seems to be breathing a sigh of relief and is expecting Washington to go about business as usual when the lobbying group holds its annual conference in two weeks. The Jerusalem Post reports…

In a little over two weeks, AIPAC holds its annual policy conference, a glittering affair traditionally graced by the most prominent of Washington’s political luminaries. Despite the uncomfortable press coverage in the wake of the Franklin arrest, all the scheduled heavy-hitters were still in place on the conference guest list as of Thursday night, with the Senate majority and minority leaders, the House majority and minority leaders and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice all still scheduled to address the thousands of expected participants.

-Meanwhile, just to make clear, the info Franklin is accused of mishandling wasn’t any old classified information:

Intelligence sources said the classification – Top Secret Sensitive Compartmented Information – was often used to protect information from electronic surveillance where disclosure might tip off a foreign government that its communications were being monitored.

In addition, just to underscore, investigators say they found 83 classified documents at Franklin’s home; Frankin allegedy disclosed classified information to numerous people, incuding “a foreign official” and members of the media.

-A poster at Lucianne.com gets how serious this is:

Remember folks, the document that Franklin allegedly passed was classified Top Secret/SCI– meaning compartmented classified information. While “classified” information is leaked often in Washington, TS-compartmented information is a different story. The additional SCI classification puts documents so classified into another realm – as anyone who has ever been given an SCI clearance knows. The indictment also states that Franklin admitted to the FBI that, in addition to passing the TS/SCI document to two unidentified U.S. persons, he also, without authorization, disclosed classified U.S. information to a foreign official and media members. That is more in line with what other posters have alluded to–but is not what is the basis for the charge against Franklin. People have lost jobs for mishandling TS/SCI material just within their office spaces- the unauthorized disclosure of TS/SCI information is serious business and shouldn’t be trivialized by apologists.

-And here’s what an Army guy who had TS/SCI clearance said last month in relation to Sandy Berger’s mishandling of such material:

For most of my career in the Army I held a TS/SCI clearance and I worked daily with the kinds of documents Berger admits to taking. Anyone who works with codeword material knows damned well how to handle it, manage it, store it and protect it. It’s taught to you from day one and drilled into you constantly. This is some of the most sensetive intelligence the US collects and uses. We take extrordinary measures to protect this data and the penalties for simply mishandling it (like fogetting to lock a safe at the end of the day) are severe for mere mortals. For doing what Berger we lock people away for up to 20 years. For passing the kind of stuff Berger ‘mishandled’ over to hostile foreign governments the range of penalties includes death. I’m not implying he did, just indicating how important our government thinks this stuff is.

Last summer, you may recall, there was quite a bit of analysis–from colleagues I respect and admire–downplaying the case.

Despite the arrest and the gravity of the charges, the NY Sun is continuing to pooh-pooh Franklin’s alleged actions.

“To us this sounds more like Sandy Berger or John Deutch than it does, say, Jonathan Pollard,” the Sun says. Um, not really. Both Berger and Deutch mishandled classified information–a serious crime–but neither was accused of deliberately passing on that information to others, as Franklin allegedly did.

There is, as they saw, a war on. Franklin’s alleged actions are scandalous. The apologists and apathetic are troubling.

***
Previous:

Charged: Larry Franklin
AIPAC fires two

The FBI arrested a Pentagon analyst Wednesday on charges that he illegally passed classified information about potential attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq to employees of a pro-Israel group.

Larry Franklin, 58, of Kearneysville, W. Va., turned himself in Wednesday morning, FBI spokeswoman Debra Weierman said. He was scheduled to make an initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., later Wednesday, Weierman said.

The charge is the first in an investigation dating back to 2001 about whether Israel improperly obtained classified U.S. information.

Franklin, who specialized on Iran and Middle Eastern affairs, allegedly gave the information to two people not entitled to receive it at a luncheon meeting at a restaurant in Arlington, Va., in June 2003, FBI agent Catherine Hanna said in an affidavit accompanying the criminal complaint against Franklin. The people at the lunch were employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a law enforcement official said on condition of anonymity because they are not identified in court papers.

If these charges hold up, I hope fellow conservatives will be as tough–if not tougher–on Franklin as they were on Sandy Berger. This looks bad. Very bad.

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Previous:

AIPAC fires two

Officials have said Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman knew Lawrence A. Franklin, a Defense Department analyst who is suspected of giving them classified information that was subsequently provided to the Israelis…..

A spokesman for Aipac, Patrick Dorton, said on Wednesday, “The action that Aipac has taken was done in consultation with counsel after recently learned information,” adding that “the conduct that Aipac expects of its employees” was also considered. Mr. Lowell’s comment about Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman “represents solely their view of the facts,” Mr. Dorton said.

Mr. Franklin cooperated with the authorities at one point. In recent months, he has chosen not to help.

The espionage investigation was downplayed by conservative commentators when the story was first publicized last summer. Aipac’s disimssal of two high-ranking employees and Frankin’s unwillingness to cooperate with investigators should give pause.

Moreover, even some of Franklin’s defenders concede that classified information probably was mishandled. As many of my fellow conservatives noted in the Sandy Berger case, this is not a trivial offense–especially when our nation is at war.

Update: John Little at Blogs of War has extensive links and background.

A 21-year-old fast-food employee has been sentenced to probation and six months in jail for double-swiping the credit cards of customers who irritated him. Travis Dominguez pleaded guilty to one count of credit card fraud, a third-degree felony. He was accused of doubled-swiping cards at the Midvale Taco Bell where he worked five times, putting in different amounts on the second swipe between $20 and $30.

Third District Judge Glenn Iwasaki ordered a psychological evaluation and $142.22 restitution, and barred Dominguez from employment involving financial transactions.

Awww, man!

***
Other Dora-the-Explorer-inspired blogging:

Berger, no swiping! Berger, no swiping!
Dora’s new siblings – Lorie Byrd
English as a second language

The Times says, “in the plea agreement reached with prosecutors, he is expected to admit that he intentionally removed copies of five classified documents…”

The Post says Berger “will acknowledge intentionally removing and destroying copies of a classified document…”

Later the same Post article tells us:

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.

Why would Berger destroy documents if they were merely copies of originals retained by Archives? For that matter, how did he gain access to copies? (I’m assuming he was not given access to a copy machine.) Did the files he was looking at contain multiple identical copies of each document?

Something just doesn’t smell right.

One of my readers, Jeanne, tries to sort it out:

If one carefully followed last summer’s coverage, it became apparent that each of the 5 versions [taken by Berger] bore unique handwritten notes or markings made by its recipient. That means each copy became an “original” document, i.e. containing information not depicted on the others.

Here is all I want to know: were all of the documents stolen by Berger identical to documents retained by Archives, or did any of Berger’s copies have unique notes or markings on them?

Unfortunately, even if the MSM were inclined to ask this question, it would be difficult to get a reliable answer since Berger shredded three of the five documents.

Update: Last summer, a commenter at Roger L. Simon’s site put it well:

It is becoming clear to me it’s the handwritten marginalia at issue, not the versions, since these would probably be available from computers, etc.

Let’s think about who would have been penning things on these docs for a minute: Berger, Clarke, The Big He, Gorelick, Janet Reno, William Cohen. Loads of possibilities for embarrassing comments from that bunch.

Writing this morning, Ed Morrissey says the documents taken by Berger were not copies:

They were not exact copies; each memo started off as a copy of an original draft by Richard Clarke, but the memos had handwritten notes from each recipient as comments, requests for revision, and suggestions for possible action. Each document was unique, and their destruction by Mr. Scissors means that we will never know what some did with Clarke’s information. All we know is that it must have reflected badly on Berger, Clinton, or both. Otherwise, why would Berger destroy them?

Update: Just had to add this. If you are a parent, you’ll immediately get the allusion in Michael King’s Berger post–best blog post title of the day!

My, what serendipitous timing. Just saying.

***
Flashbacks:

Sandy Berg(l)er?
Berger and a side order of lies
Ace of Spades spoof: Mystical Artifacts Removed From Top-Secret Government Warehouse

***
Update: An unhinged reader says Berger didn’t put the pilfered documents in his socks.

Sandy Berger did not put papers in his socks. He put them in his
pockets. Have you ever inadvertently put things in your pocket before?
You are a liar.
Rot in hell.
xoxo
Terrence T. McDonald

Oooo-kay. I stand corrected. Not his socks. Just his pants. Knowingly. And his jacket pocket. Knowingly. And his portfolio. “Inadvertently.”

And to answer Mr. Unhinged’s question: I have never stuffed classified documents illegally into any of my pockets or bags “inadvertently” or otherwise and made them disappear.

Those little wrapped soap bars from a hotel room? Yes, guilty. Top-secret memos. Ummmm, no.

Update II: Jason Smith at Generation Why reminds us that Bill Clinton laughed when the news of Berger’s sticky fingers first broke.

Flashback II: A perfect response to Mr. Unhinged Reader from Gerard Van der Leun…Yes, Down My Pants. Oh, Like You Haven’t?

Update III: Confederate Yankee has fun with Photoshop…Robble-robble.

Always cutting-edge Chris Muir at Day By Day Cartoon weighs in…

Snort!

I’m with Captain Ed , who is not happy with the message that Berger’s plea deal with the Justice Department sends. Also make sure to check out Ed’s specially-reader-designedSandy Berger socks. Those would make great Beltway Christmas gifts.

Power Line’s verdict: Another successful cover-up