This guy deserves to be in jail.  His $50k fine and community service is effectively a reward for a job well done, considering the penalties he could have and should have faced, all so he could destroy evidence of how Clinton handled Bin Ladin and terrorism from Al Qaeda.

And consider this:  If the documents had supported Clinton, why destroy them?

Via the AP:

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.

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)."

Berger acknowledged that he later retrieved the documents from the construction area and returned with them to his office.

Berger, with the authorization of former President Clinton, was reviewing National Security Council documents on Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida, Sudan, and related presidential correspondence. The review was to facilitate Berger’s impending testimony before the House and Senate intelligence committees.

Can you say whitewash?

Ed at Captain’s Quarters wins the headline contest:

 A Little Song, A Little Dance, National-Security Documents Down Your Pants

Bill Clinton and other former members of his administration claimed at the time that Berger habitually mislaid documents, and that his theft of the documents from the classified area of the Archives was just absent-mindedness. This shows that Berger deliberately lifted the documents. He put them in his pants, took a break without escort, and then hid them under the construction trailer. After he returned to the locked room to officially check out, he then went back and retrieved the documents — which have all disappeared.

And what were these documents? Copies of reports that dealt with the Clinton administration’s handling of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, copies that likely had unique handwritten notes from the high-ranking officials to whom they were published. They had direct bearing on the counterterrorism efforts of the administration — especially regarding Sandy Berger — at a time when the nation demanded an accounting of the failures that led to 9/11.

Berger got a $50,000 fine and 100 hours of community service for this theft. Had this sequence of events been known at the time he pled guilty, the sentencing would have been seen as the sham it is. Even at that point, all he admitted was that the theft was "not inadvertent". This strongly suggests that it was planned in advance for a specific purpose, and it’s too late for the Department of Justice to lean on him to discover exactly what that was.

Ed then asks the money question:

Will Hillary have Sandy Berger on her national-security team for the 2008 election? His three-year revocation of clearance will expire just a few months before the election …

Only in the world of Clintonian rationalization and sophistry could hiding them in your pants, concealing them beneath a construction trailer, picking them up again and destroying them in your office be considered "absentmindedness", as his defenders tried to claim.

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