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STARWISE Yup, Savage was right: he predicted last week that the media would go overboard covering a missing woman, and sure enough .. here comes a missing woman in Utah and a suspicious husband. ""When I was informed by the Archives that there were documents missing, I immediately returned everything I had except for a few documents that I apparently had accidentally discarded." Sandy Berger A very telling Washington Times editorial, posted on the WhiteWater FREEPER boards from 1999: "Topic White Water Sandy Berger must go Washington Times National Weekly Edition March 22-28, 1999 Editorial It's time for National Security Adviser Sandy Berger to go. Not only has his knee-jerk reaction to the Chinese espionage scandal -- "We're talking about breaches of security that happened in the mid 1980s" when Ronald Reagan was president -- been tired and old. But his explanation for what happened on his watch after the security breach became known is as disingenuous as any explanation ever offered by the Clinton White House. If Mr Berger's performance March 14 on NBC's Meet the Press is any guide, is it any wonder why the White House is fighting so desperately to keep classified as much of the Cox committee's report on Chinese espionage as possible? That report, endorsed unanimously by Democratic and Republican committee members alike, catalogued China's successful efforts during the last 20 years to acquire -- by legal and illegal means -- the most sensitive US military technology, damaging US national security interests in the process. Mr Berger asserted that the initial briefing about Chinese espionage which he received at the White House in April 1996 was "very general" and "very preliminary" According to Mr Berger, that briefing, which was conducted by a group of senior Energy Department officials, including its chief counterintelligence officer, Notra Trulock, merely "indicated" that there was "some evidence" that China "may have" obtained "in some fashion" sensitive nuclear weapons information. "At that stage," Mr Berger told NBC's Tim Russert, "we did not know who, we did really not know how, and we really did not know what" Later, Mr Berger told Mr Russert, "The FBI hadn't even begun its investigation. In fact, however, Mr Trulock had begun his counterintelligence investigation of China's theft of one of America's most advanced warheads 12 months before briefing the White House. In late 1995, moreover, the FBI had already begun its own investigation, poring over travel and work records of lab scientists and building a list of five suspects. By February 1996, two months before briefing the White House, Energy Department counterintelligence officers had identified one particular suspect, a scientist, who "stuck out like a sore thumb," as one official told the New York Times. Before visiting the White House in April, Mr Trulock briefed Paul Redmond, the CIA's chief spy hunter who had unmasked Aldrich Ames. It is instructive to compare Mr Redmond's anguished reaction -- "This is going to be just as bad as the Rosenbergs" who gave the Soviets the secrets to the atomic bomb, he recalled saying at the time -- with Mr Berger's laid back reaction to what he perceived to be a "very general" and "very preliminary'' briefing.
investigating this" In fact, however, by the end of 1996, so little progress had been made by the FBI that Energy Department officials were convinced the FBI had assigned too few resources to the case. And, according to Mr Redmond, the FBI had not been updating the CIA's counterintelligence office. Mr Berger also asserted on March 14 that, upon learning of China's nuclear espionage, the administration "imposed and forced the strictest controls on China of any country except those for which we have embargoes, such as Libya" In fact, the administration did the opposite. In February 1998, the same month President Clinton belatedly ordered greater security measures at the nation's weapons labs, he ignored strenuous objections from the Justice Department, which was investigating Loral Corp. Overruling the Justice Department, the president granted Loral a waiver for official transfers of essentially the same missile expertise to China that the company was being criminally investigated for giving to China without authorization in 1996. This expertise would help China build rockets that could carry multiple, independently targetable warheads -- the very type of warhead whose design China had stolen and about which Mr Berger had been briefed nearly two years earlier. Mr Berger also claimed that the order signed by President Clinton in February 1998, which mandated increased security measures at the labs, "made the changes I believe are necessary." But many of these changes, including recommendations made by the FBI long before Mr Clinton's February 1998 directive, were not instituted until October 1998, after Bill Richardson became Secretary of Energy. Moreover, there is a serious question even today whether security at the labs has been sufficiently strengthened.
has not improved" a recently retired US counterintelligence official told Bill Gertz of The Washington Times last week. Christopher Cox, who chaired the select committee investigating China's acquisition of US military technology, told Mr Gertz that there is a "lack of adequate counterintelligence at out national laboratories, and, frankly, throughout the government." Indeed, it was Hazel O'Leary, Mr Clinton's first secretary of energy, who slashed the department's security and counterintelligence budgets.
" the recently retired counterintelligence official told Mr Gertz. Mr Berger also rejected the claim by Congress that the administration failed to inform it in an adequate and timely fashion of China's espionage at the labs. "Congress was informed, I believe, before I was in '96" Mr Berger told Mr Russert.
Norman Dicks, the ranking Democrat on both the House intelligence panel and the Cox select committee, told the New York Times: "Porter Goss" the former CIA official who chairs the House intelligence committee, "and I were not properly briefed about the dimensions of the problem. It was compartmentalized and disseminated over the years in dribs and drabs so that the full extent of the problem was not known until the Cox committee." Indeed, it was Mr Dicks who, having become so impatient at the administration's inadequate response to the Los Alamos laboratory spy scandal, approached Mr Richardson and told him action needed to be taken immediately. Finally, the suspect who "stuck out like a sore thumb" three years earlier was given a polygraph test and found to be deceptive in February. On March 6, the New York Times reported the details of the scandal, and the suspect was fired two days later. Earlier, the Energy Department had for more than a year disregarded an FBI recommendation that the suspect's access to classified information be restricted.
His utterly disingenuous remarks constitute yet another administration stonewall hiding the truth. If this is the kind of advice the president is getting from his national security adviser, the citizens of this country are being very badly served. rarely has someone in one of the highest positions in US government exercised so much personal hubris and possessed such scandalous and debached character and consistently and repeatedly put the security of America and her people at such risk. From the Bergler's bio at Washington Speaker's Bureau: "America Fights Back: The War Against Terrorism Berger was on the front lines of the fight against terrorism during the Clinton Administration --responding to terrorist attacks against our embassies in Africa and elsewhere and marshalling the resources of the United States Government in the effort to strike at Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network. Based on his direct and recent experience, Berger is in a unique position to explain to audiences the nature of the terrorist groups that have attacked us and the challenges and choices ahead for the United States. He will describe those clearly and candidly and answer the wide-ranging questions on the minds of the American people as America fight...
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