Its also true that we’ll never know what was taken from the archives. Its all speculation. Since Watergate, our higher level officials have found ways to confound the justice system in this country, and conceal the truth. Clinton’s administration did it, and Bush is doing it now.

But to me the current issue of Libby/Cheney is what the post was about. Partisanship seems to prevent a healthy discussion of what really was going on in the lead-up to the war. This is bait and switch.

CS- I really think you are willing to give the benefit of the doubt to Bush/Cheney on whether they purposely allowed false intelligence into the SOTU, and then orchestrated a smear campaign against Wilson.That is the larger issue- not Plame’s outing. But they have been shielded from the investigation, and Libby is the fall guy. If you believe that Berger acted for Clinton, how can you say Libby did not act to protect Bush and Cheney at their direction??

And even if the leakers thought, this is commonly known information, they should have checked before they spread it.

Agreed on that.

It wasn’t YOU who has been diverting this discussion. A well known trick to avoid discussing awkward truths, but some still fall for it…

“If it’s true that Plame’s status was pretty widely known, then I find it credible that the leakers may not have realized that they were spreading information that should have been kept under wraps.”
Afaik there’s only one testimony in the trial that supports this view, so I think this is questionable. And even if the leakers thought, this is commonly known information, they should have checked before they spread it. Afaik you have to underwrite that you acknoledge the rules for handling sensible information and that you’e aware of the consquences, before you get a security clearance. Imho, the actions of the officials in the Plame case constitute criminal negligence.

My point wasn’t to compare Berger to Libby, or make any comments on the relative guilt, innocence, or the impact of their actions, but rather point out that no one seems willing to look at anything objectively, only through partisanship spin.

By commenting on Berger, I didn’t mean to imply lesser concern about Libby- just want to make that clear. I do have lesser concern than some people simply because I’m not sufficiently convinced about the “outing”. If it’s true that Plame’s status was pretty widely known, then I find it credible that the leakers may not have realized that they were spreading information that should have been kept under wraps. However, even in that situation I find it egregious that the administration appears to have purposefully attempted to discredit Wilson by implying that nepotism was involved in his appointment to go to Niger.

Basically in both cases it seems to me that CYA was more important to these officials than the national security.

My point wasn’t to compare Berger to Libby, or make any comments on the relative guilt, innocence, or the impact of their actions, but rather point out that no one seems willing to look at anything objectively, only through partisanship spin.

And damn if the comments here didn’t bare that out!

egrubs said:
February 15, 2007 at 4:35 pm
Without feeling any need to defend Berger at all…

I wonder why some feel the need to blame Clinton for it.

It just strikes me as incompatibly odd. I sure hope none of my ex-employees rob where I used to manage, or else I may get blamed too…

egrubs,
I mentioned one scenario that might implicate Berger rather than Clinton: that perhaps there was documentation of something that he personally did as NSA that reflected badly on him. Could be something potentially criminal that caused him worry of consequences, or could be just that he truly felt some personal liability for not preventing the attacks and didn’t want that to be public knowledge.

A few things Rudi . First of all, why would a person destroy mere copies? Second, why would Berger return documents he didn’t destroy? He obvious answer would be that the copies he destroyed differ in some ways from those he returned. At some point common sense applies.

Berger had access to originals which had not yet been copied. But the real hot items were the destroyed copies. Copies are most often the ones which are used when handwritten notes are taken. This is to keep the originals pristine. Often times you will have several copies given to different people and containing handwritten notes by each.

But you are welcome to believe Berger stole simple copies and decided to destroy some of them and return others for no reason. But if that doesn’t make sense to you apply some common sense and you will have your answer

I wonder why some feel the need to blame Clinton for it.

It just strikes me as incompatibly odd. I sure hope none of my ex-employees rob where I used to manage, or else I may get blamed too…

Are you trying to say that Berger was trying to keep Clinton from being blamed for 9/11? That’s a bit of a stretch.

You really think that is a stretch, Kim? I don’t see it that way at all, and I wouldn’t if the party affiliations were reversed. You wouldn’t have similar suspicions if there were a major terrorist attack after Bush left office and then Condi Rice were caught stuffing documents in her clothing?

And I’ve asked before, but I’ll ask again. If this administration was so concerned with Iraq and Iran’s burgeoning WMD programs, why would they out a high level CIA official whose responsibility was tracking those programs? You don’t think that puts anyone at risk???

Rudi, who died from Libby’s leak? As for Berger, I would like to know what it was all about. As C Stanley says, Berger was only caught towards the end by sharp-eyed archive officials. They had been suspicious for some time before he had the documents we know about.

What was Berger doing? Bill Clinton laughed it off as “Sandy’s bad record keeping”.

Many of the documents Berger had access to were originals. The collection had not yet been annotated. No one…other than Clinton-era officials…knew what was in them.

Berger was revising history before it was written. Why?

Berger’s actions were probably selfish, for his own interests, not to defnd his boss.

You disappoint me Rudi. You normally are very good at seeing the big picture. You really think he did that on his own, not at the direction of Bill/Hillary?

That is an example of what I was just talking about.

Let’s say it is 5 years from now. Congress is investigating something that happened on Hillary/Obama’s watch, but there is evidence that the problem stretched back into the Bush administration. Condi goes to the National Archives, steals a bunch of documentation that appears to be related to the investigation, and destroys them.

Would you feel the same way, that this likely was just Condi protecting herself, and Bush/Rove/Cheney had no involvement?

Leaking to the press goes back to prior to the U.S. even being a country.

Another aspect of this is that despite all the crocodile tears shed about the evils partisanship, on one side you have primarily Democrats and Liberals saying that the Libby affair is a danger to Constitutional Democracy, and the other side only Republicans and Conservatives seemed concerned about Sandy Berger stealing and destroying classified information.

We all seem to view the legality and the justification for bending the rules through our own partisan glasses.

I agree with you 100 percent. If I was to write a history of the Wilson-Plame affair, the duplicity of the press would be the main ingredient, followed by the culture of lying.