Monday, July 4

Silence, Secrets and Sandy Berger

Sandy Berger, former Security Director for the Clinton Administration and Security Advisor for the Kerry campaign, has been on trial the past few months for "inadvertently" stuffing top secret documents into his pants and shoes, sneaking them out of the National Archives, taking them home and "accidentally" destroying them.

Berger has "cut a plea deal" and he's to be sentenced on July 8. However,his "trial" has raised more questions than it has answered:

1. Since Berger enjoyed personal protection because of his status at the time he obviously was stealing for someone else; who was he attempting to protect by stealing those documents?
2. Does anyone know what the stolen documents were, and why he had to return a second time to get more?
3. Since Berger was serving as Kerry's national security consultant is it possible that his intent was to leak privileged national security information to Kerry in the effort to defeat President Bush?
4. Have all the people connected with the Berger theft been named and prosecuted?
5. Were the stolen documents actually destroyed, or were they secreted for Mr. Berger's later use?
6. Is the plea deal conditioned on Berger giving up information?
7. Berger apparently did not act alone. Is naming names part of the plea deal?
8. Berger admitted to stealing documents the Archives did not list as missing. What did he do with them?
9. Is his plea deal conditioned on Berger returning these as well?
10. Did Berger actually destroy stolen docs--as he said---or are they being secreted for Berger's self-serving reasons: (a) for Hillary's campaign in exchange for Berger getting a political appointment, for (b) Berger's financial benefit in his oil consulting business, (c) to cover-up 9/11?
11. Who else was involved if there was a cover-up?
12. Did the documents reveal that Clinton knew that 9/11 was going to happen?
13. Since it is obvious to even those of most limited intelligence that stuffing documents into your pants and shoes cannot possibly be unintentional, shouldn't Berger's defense of "inadvertently" taking them be considered lying to a judge? Isn't that, in itself, a severe offense?
14. Why haven't we heard more about all this through the mainstream media? This has the potential to be as dangerous to national security as Watergate was -- more so, even. Why are they silent?
15. Does the fact that Berger's "global strategy firm," Stonebridge International, has taken on an interesting client, Gulfsands Petroleum Ltd., a private Houston-based oil and gas company, who, along with its larger partner Devon Energy Corp. of Oklahoma City, has oil and gas exploration and development interests in Syria and Iraq have anything to do with his theft of the National Archives documents?

Those are questions that really should be answered publicly and completely if justice is truly to be served in this case.

I wonder why no one else is asking them?

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