www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_07_18.php#003195
print) A difference of opinion between Tucker Carlson and the 9/11 Commission ... Berger stripped the files of every single copy of a single memo which detailed the Clinton administration's response to the Y2K terror threat.
July 22nd 2004 Then there's 9/11 Commissioners Gorelick and Gorton ... DOBBS: Let me ask you, not necessarily directly on point, but certainly related. Sandy Berger, the former head of the national security -- national security adviser under the Clinton administration, accused of, and admitting taking classified documents from the National Archives, those notes, whether copies or originals still unclear. Did the commission review that material, to what -- can you shed any light on what happened there? GORTON: Well, we can't shed any light on exactly what happened there and on Sandy Berger's troubles with the Justice Department and the Archives. What we can say unequivocally is we had all of that information. All of them have -- are infused in and are a part of our report. DOBBS: So the commission was denied no information as a result of whatever Sandy Berger did or did not do at the National Archives? GORELICK: And we have been so assured by the Justice Department.
BERNAMA THE MALAYSIAN NATIONAL NEWS AGENCY KUALA LUMPUR, April 20, 1998 Former United States Defence Secretary Dick Cheney today hit out at his government for imposing unilateral economic sanctions like the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, saying they have been "ineffective, did not provide the desired results and a bad policy". "I have made it clear that our (the US unilateral) sanctions policy is wrong," he said when asked to comment on the Iran-Libya Act which contains provisions for sanctions to be imposed by the US against foreign companies making investment beyond US$20 million a year in the oil and gas sector of the targeted countries. Malaysia, which is against the extra-territorial law, has said that Petronas and other Malaysian companies will continue to invest abroad despite the US threat of sanctions under the Act. Petronas is currently involved in a US$2 billion gas field project in Iran undertaken jointly with SA Total of France and Gazprom of Russia. Speaking to reporters after calling on Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad at the Prime Minister's office here, Cheney, who is now the chairman and CEO of Halliburton, said: "The US needs to be much more restraint then we have been in terms of pursuing unilateral economic sanctions." Cheney, who served under the Bush administration between 1989 and 1993, however said the multilateral economic sanctions imposed by the international community on Iraq were "appropriate". "I disagree with the current law (Iran-Libya Sanctions Act) but my company will comply with the rule (Act)," he said. He said he also disagreed with the unilateral economic sanctions imposed on Myanmar and Arzerbaijan.
article for more on the grand jury investigation into whether Halliburton broke the Iranian sanctions law. For what it's worth, I think the promiscuous use of unilateral economic sanctions probably is a bad idea -- an example of the capricious and shortsighted use of American power that limits our ability to deal forcefully with real problems by antagonizing allies and frittering away diplomatic capital with silliness like the continuing sanctions against Cuba, among other examples.
According to Reuters: "The Dutch are nearly four inches taller on average than the British and Americans, and almost six inches taller than they were four decades ago."
Yesterday I was discussing with a friend whether the leak seemed more likely to be a Republican leak or a Democratic one (his view). The latter possibility is not as far-fetched as it might sound: the idea would be that some Advertisement Democrat found out and realized it would be better to get the story out now than, say, at the end of October. I've thought from the beginning that this looked like a political leak from the Republican side. And, as I told my friend yesterday, I think subsequent events tend to strengthen that assumption. Clearly, no one in-the-know breathed a word of this until a couple days ago -- as the Kerry campaign found out to its own moritification. Yet from the moment the story broke every paper seems to be finding multiple sources who are willing to talk freely about minute details of the case.
Google News and you'll see that even the Akron Gazette and the Curryville Crier seem to be getting hourly exclusive scoops. In my experience criminal investigations aren't nearly that porous -- with multiple sources talking to multiple publications, and all on cue -- unless someone on the inside has greenlighted the leaks. What's more, if the law enforcement officials and political appointees hadn't been talking up until this point, why would they be chattering so loud now just because some obscure Dem happened to go to John Solomon with a preemptive strike?
print) Here's a question -- not a rhetorical one, but an actual one. Is there any sort of definitive reporting on whether the documents Berger is alleged to have taken from the National Archives were originals or copies?
print) The one thing I'm certain about in this Berger matter is that I really wish the folks investigating his case were investigating the Plame case because if that investigation leaked as much as this one does my life over the last year would have been quite a bit easier.
Senior officials at the White House Counsel's Office (perhaps understandable) and "several top aides to" the president (not so understandable) were given a heads-up about the Berger investigation months ago.
tangled article about how Archives staffers allegedly became suspicious of Berger while he was reviewing the documents and even started monitoring him. Calling the piece 'tangled' isn't necessarily a criticism. The reporters clearly have two very conflicting versions of events and are trying to explain both -- and point out the ways they contradict. The piece reads as if the authors' themselves are uncertain which version to credit. What's also clear from the Post article is that not only law enforcement officials but also one 'government source' are leaking like crazy about this story. The story the leakers tell in the Post story certainly seems hard to reconcile with inadvertence.
print) Apropos of my earlier post about Republican desperation, here's Charlie Cook of the Cook Report on the state of the presidential race ... Last week in this space, I discounted the widely held view that the knotted polling numbers between Bush and Kerry meant that the race itself was even. I argued that given the fact that well-known incumbents with a defined record rarely get many undecided voters -- a quarter to a third at an absolute maximum -- an incumbent in a very stable race essentially tied at 45 percent was actually anything but in an even-money situation. "What you see is what you get" is an old expression for an incumbent's trial heat figures, meaning very few undecided voters fall that way. This is certainly not to predict that Bush is going to lose, that this race is over or that other events and developments will not have an enormous impact on this race. The point is that this race has settled into a place that is not at all good for an incumbent, is remarkably stable, and one that is terrifying many Republican lawmakers, operatives and activists. But in a typically Republican fashion, they are too polite and disciplined to talk about it much publicly.
print) From a Press Release just out from Speaker Hastert ... The American people deserve to know why Mr Berger apparently skirted the law and removed highly classified terrorism documents, purportedly in his pants, from a secure reading room at the National Archives and then proceeded to lose or destroy some of them. "How could President Clinton's former National Security Advisor be so cavalier? "Was Mr Berger trying to cover-up key facts regarding intelligence failures during his watch? "What kind of security risk does that pose to Americans today? "I know Chairman Tom Davis (R-VA) will work to get the full truth of what really happened and help all of us better understand...
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