“We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone,” said special counsel Jack Smith in handing down a multi-count criminal indictment against Donald Trump. “Adherence to the rule of law is a bedrock principle of the Department of Justice.”
The nation may have “one set of laws,” but the subsequent clause, “they apply to everyone,” makes a very dark joke out of Smith’s unseemly boast.
Of course, the treatment of the Bidens and the Clintons show the DOJ’s “bedrock principle” to be so much Silly Putty, but no case in recent memory has revealed the depth of the DOJ’s corruption like that of Bill Clinton’s national security adviser, Sandy Berger.
Unlike all of his predecessors, Berger, a trade lawyer and lobbyist, had no foreign policy expertise. What he did have was the trust of the president and the absence of any known scruples.
Clinton would entrust Berger, his ultimate fixer, with some highly sensitive assignments, most notably the astonishingly self-serving deals with China. The pair deserve their own special circle in hell for helping turn China into a superpower.
As with Trump, Berger’s case involves defense secrets and the National Archives. In April 2002, Clinton designated Berger as his representative to review intelligence documents in advance of the various hearings on 9/11.
As a 2007 report by the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform specified, Berger did not welcome this assignment.
According to the archivists, Berger “indicated some disgust with the burden and responsibility of conducting the document review.” It was hard to blame him.
To purge the archives of incriminating documents, Berger risked everything – his reputation, his livelihood, his very freedom. Whatever he swiped had to have the potential to rewrite history.
According to the House report, Berger made four trips to the National Archives. The first of his visits was in May 2002, the last in October 2003.
“The full extent of Berger’s document removal,” said the House report, “is not known and never can be known.”
What is known is that Berger stole classified documents, stashed them under a trailer at a construction site during breaks, retrieved them at the end of the day, and admittedly shredded them into little pieces.
If the story has a hero it is Paul Brachfeld, the inspector general of the National Archives. He spoke out forcefully about the obvious criminal activity his staff was witnessing.
As was true then, and now, the Democrats embedded in the Department of Justice did not believe for a minute that “laws apply to everyone.” Twenty years ago the DOJ was already the lawfare arm of the Democratic Party.
On Jan. 14, 2004, the day Berger first testified privately before the 9/11 Commission, Brachfeld conferred with DOJ attorney Howard Sklamberg.
Suspecting that Berger had obstructed the commission’s work, Brachfeld wanted assurance that the commissioners knew about Berger’s crime.
He got stonewalled instead. On March 22, 2004, two days before Berger’s public testimony, senior DOJ attorneys John Dion and Bruce Swartz told Brachfeld the DOJ had no intention of notifying the commission about Berger’s mischief.
What unfolded on March 24 was pure burlesque. Although Berger had already been caught stealing and shredding relevant documents, the commissioners greeted him like an honored public servant.
Said the clueless Republican chairman, Thomas Kean, “We are pleased to welcome before the commission a witness who can offer us considerable insight into questions of national policy coordination, Mr. Samuel Berger.”
Two weeks after Berger’s song and dance before the 9/11 Commission, Brachfeld called DOJ Inspector General Glenn Fine and again expressed his concern that the commissioners, at least the Republicans, remained in the dark about Berger’s theft.
At an April 9 meeting Brachfeld reminded those gathered that “Berger knowingly removed documents and therefore, may have purposely impeded the 9/11 investigation.” Some of those documents, Brachfeld added, might have been “original.”
Despite his efforts, Brachfeld could not persuade the DOJ lawyers to inform the 9/11 Commission of Berger’s criminal actions. For the record, Dion, Swartz, Sklamberg and Fine were all holdovers from the Clinton administration.
As far as I could tell, Fine, Swartz and Sklamberg had to this point only contributed to Democratic candidates in federal races, and Dion had no record of federal contributions.
The commissioners learned about the crime only after a leak from somewhere in the Bush administration. The leak occurred three days before the commission released its final report and too late for any serious amendment.
When the story finally broke in July 2004, Berger was serving as a campaign adviser to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. “Last year, when I was in the archives reviewing documents, I made an honest mistake,” he lied to a media eager to believe him.
Finally, on Friday, April 1, 2005, the Department of Justice announced its embarrassingly lenient plea deal with Berger – a $10,000 fine and the loss of his top-level security clearance for three years, just in time for him to advise Barack Obama starting in 2008.
In his 2015 obituary, the Times admitted that Berger had “stumbled” when he destroyed those documents, but otherwise it was all sunshine and lollipops.
Then President Obama called Berger “one of our nation’s foremost national security leaders.” Speaking for himself and Hillary, Bill Clinton added, “Nobody was more knowledgeable about policy or smarter about how to formulate it.”
Said Susan Rice, whose future behavior would bear out her words, “He was a role model for many of us here.” That may be the most honest claim Susan Rice has ever made on record.
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