Pat,
I don't know if this is true; so far we don't have much confirmation for what Weldon has been saying. However, if this pans out, and if Berger knew, it is horrifically devastating news for the Dems and Clintons, so I would expect the MSM to try to bury it. Come to think of it, they have done a pretty good job of burying any mention of Sandy Berger for quite some time...
The timeline fits. Like the above commenter, I agree that this would be incredibly devastating news. How come we know so little about what is happening with Berger??? And his "lost" docuents?
Great minds think alike. I posted the exact same thought over at CQ.
Yes, it would indeed be devastating. I suspect if it's true it will eventually come out. I'm not positive, but I recall that the National Archives had multiple copies of everything Sandy Scissorhands took home in his shorts. If so, even his margin notes will be preserved for posterity, and the blame for 9/11 can be placed squarely where it belongs: on the feckless Clinton Administration.
I think - if my memory serves me correctly - that the Goreliks (Jamie and her family) were Great Neck (NY) anti-war (Vietnam)"commie"/radical chic-types.
Like Kerry apres Vietnam and "BJ" Clinton and his wife Hillary.
They were all anti-Vietnam and for unilateral disarmament.
They grew up with a deeply entrenched anti-war/pacifist/"the USSR isn't bad"/Ho CHi Minh is good/don't trust the Pentagon attitude. (I know; I was there!)
This was STILL their attitude by the time they were "adults" and running the country.
Hence the IDIOTIC "don't ask/don't tell" policy - A POLICY WRITTEN AND INSTITUTED BY GORELIK WHEN SHE WAS AT THE PENTAGON!
This was Clinton's first major act as president and it sent a signal that he valued his homosexual partisans more than the Pentagon (with whom - on this issue - he did NOT adequately confer). It was a HUGE poltical blunder, and it ruined his honeymoon, so to speak.
Gorelik and Clinton went on to diminish our national/civil defense by erecting "THE WALL."
HERE'S THE MOST IRONIC KICKER:
Clinton (and Kerry) belived that jihadoterror was a "law enforcement" issue. Hence, after the Khobar Tower bombing ands the 2 African embassy bombing HE SIMPLY DISPATCHED THE FBI!
(And when offered OBL, they passed.)
Sending the FBI was a GROSSLY INADEQUATE RESPONSE WHICH ONLY EMBOLDENED THE ENEMY.
BUT IT's WORSE THAN THAT, (and here's the IRONIC PART):
Even tho' Clinton viewed jihadoterror as a "law enforcement" problem, he and Gorelik erected "THE WALL" WHICH PREVENTED LAW ENNFORCEMENT PEOPLE FROM HAVING THE INFO/INTEL' THEY NEEDED IN ORDER TO DO THEIR ANTI-TERROR JOBS WELL!
Golly, it's almost as if Clinton didn't care. Well, Nero fiddled as Rome burned. Clinton got a BJ as Khobar Towers and the African Embassies and the USS Cole burned.
Whatta bum! Him, AND Gorelik. And Berger.
Like the House of Saud, they should be sued for $1 TRILLION for their gross negligence!
Great post. Does beg the question as to why the MSM went ballistic on Rove and yet gave Berger a pass.
One might think there was an agenda involved.
I think the Clinton administration has plenty to hide. I'm sure he will deny any hand in it. Good theory.
What a shame ,I was hoping Berger was a paper fetishist.
aren't there easier places to get paper other than the national archivess? Maybe he had a fetish for paper that could get someone in trouble.
This is great, Pat - I linked to it, bigtime, but couldn't trackback! 
Jamie Gorelick was the author of the infamous Wall that stopped FBI criminal investigators from communicating with intelligence investigators. Heather MacDonald nailed the Clinton Administration for the wall. Ashcroft pinned Goelick's name on that wall.
http://www.asininity.com/comment...ts/P1736_0_1_0/
The important question is obvious:
How can the press and the Left blame this on Bush?
Other than that, pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
There is plenty of blame to go around. I am suspicious of the first report coming from NYT. Obviously, DOD people could have approached Rumsfeld after 1/01. Something got passed around during transition. Either someone like Clarke withheld or Bush's people failed to act with urgency. Blame starts with Clinton crew but it is going to spread far and wide.
Fresh Air,
...and the blame for 9/11 can be placed squarely where it belongs: on the feckless Clinton Administration.
I think it's important to remember that the Clinton Administration screwed up, but it's the Islamist bastards that hijacked the planes. There's a big difference between failing to thwart the attacks and actually being the guy screaming Allah akbar.
I just think it's important to keep in mind who the real enemy is.
jp
JP--
I completely agree. It was the Islamist nutcases who are responsible for the attack. And even if Clinton had acted on the information from Able Danger, there's no assurance 9/11 could have been permanently prevented. I do not hold Bill Clinton responsible for the attacks, or for failing to stop them.
However, if you accept Dr. Sanity's premise, then there is a strong effervescence of guilt coming from the whole Sandy Berger document-stealing business. So what gets me is the grandstanding, preening holier-than-thou horsesh*t that started coming from the Democrats like Richard Clarke, Joe Wilson and Jamie Gorelick when there was a presidential election to be won or lost. Not only was this nothing but after-the-fact, hell-rasising, but a large percentage of it has turned out to be complete lies.
This thing really stinks, and it stinks in a peculiar, detectable odor of scandal in a way that any seasoned political observer will detect. If Berger knew and did nothing, or Clinton knew and did nothing and then tried to cover it up, they should get the political tarring and feathering they both deserve.
"and the blame for 9/11 can be placed squarely where it belongs: on the feckless Clinton Administration.": Fresh Air
I don't NORMALLY insult people, but this is an example of utter stupidity. The blame for 9/11 lies firmly with the Islamofacist movement.
Rob Read- you are correct--we must focus on the real enemy; although, as Dr. S has pointed out the "enablers" and those who willfully and blindly refuse to acknowledge the real enemy also put the country at risk.
Can u imagine if Karl Rove admitted stealing classified information? Berger should get a trip to Leavenworth, but my bet is he won't. Bush needs to send attack-dog Cheney out on this, but he probably won't do that either. As we saw with Swift Vets, a concerted effort by the alternative media can trump an MSM blackout
This has to be one of those things that makes you go "hmmm." It is the first rational explanation of a possible motive for Burger that I've heard though. I bet the NYT has at least ten staff reporters on this right now (He said laughing quietly to himself).
I don't see how the delay in sentencing for Berger figures into this. Wouldn't it have been better for Berger to recieve his sentence before this info came out? Can you explain the ramifications of this?
As someone who has hired people to locate documents at the National Archives, I can confirm that pilferage is a huge problem. I've seen historically priceless photo albums that have had images cut out with razor blades, and so many original documents have disappeared that researchers are essentially kept under surveillance. Berger got away with it for as long as he did because they trusted the creep. Abuse of trust is the defining characteristic of the Clinton administration, isn't it?
Lawrence - I was thinking that it was perhaps delayed because new information came to light? Perhaps info about Able Danger? There is always a delay in getting information that is "secret" into the public awareness. OTOH perhaps it has no meaning at all. I put it in because its the only thing we've heard about Berger for some time.
Rob Read: And their collaborators.
These new revelations do indeed shine a new light on --and render even more suspicious-- the behavior of Sandy Berger. But I'm going to suggest that even this doesn't fully explain why Berger did what he did. This is a part of it, but tere's more to this story that we don't know yet.
On the positive side, isn't it encouraging that the 9/11 hijackers WERE spotted and tracked, even though the Klintoons' incompetence and malfeasance made it impossible to stop them? Now that the "Wall" is down, I feel a bit safer in that any future Al Qaedistas in the US will be looked at with an appropriately jaundiced eye, followed everywhere by large ugly men with bulges under their armpits and deported at the least suspicion of irregularity. Ain't I a dreamer?
This new info, though, does show that the Jihadists weren't as smart or successfully sneaky as some of us were afraid they were.
Anonymous: "How come we know so little about what is happening with Berger??? And his "lost" documents?"
These are interesting questions. I believe the fact of silence that your questions have raised demonstrates the news media has an agenda towards the left as opposed to the right.
If Berger and the news media are considered to be on the left, then it would follow that the news media being on the left would ignore Berger being on the left no matter how much new evidence is discovered that may give additional fuel to the Berger scandal.
You need to bookend this timeline with Jayna Davis' book "The Third Terrorist", which talks about the involvement of Iraqi Intellegence agents and our little buddy Atta who was present during the planning stages at Oklahoma City. It also talks about how the FBI, acting under orders only wanted to hear about Mcveigh and did its level best to get rid of any evidence that pointed to anything other than armed white fanatics.
There is a more profound truth here: the court of HRH Hillary (which included Reno and Gorelick) was only interested in acting on perceived threats from armed Americans and the oportunity to remove guns from the hands of the public.
Anything else, like Islamist terrorists planning to kill American citizens in job lots was unimportant (or even desired if it was overseas military personnel - maybe enough soldiers would decide to quit after being targets and humiliated without being able to fight back. Then they could get rid of the military). Throw a couple of cruise missiles around to make it look good and go back to huntin' rednecks.
IIRC, the National Archive stated unequivocally at the time that Berger did not have originals of anything. That is, if there were any notes in the margins etc that he was trying to destroy, he would have failed, because he was smuggling copies, not originals, and the handwritten notes still exist in the archives on the originals. It's possible he was panicking, as suggested, but he accomplished nothing in terms of suppressing information.
Is it just me or do Americans have way too much faith in the FBI? I mean, they might be up to solving kidnappings and the like - but for 3 decades they were bascially thugs for rent under Hoover, they sucked at counter-intel (Aldrich Ames anyone?) and they appear to have been willing to ignore key evidence and threats in order to keep the HillBilly in chief happy.
Lawrence: I don't see how the delay in sentencing for Berger figures into this.
One possibility?
According to news reports the last few days, none of the media picked up on the statement Weldon made in June concerning Able Danger.
I don't have a citation for it but if I recall correctly, and I think I do, the reason given in July for postponing Berger's sentencing was that he had been cooperating and was continuing to cooperate with investigators.
In August . . .
Over at Red State, "Steiff" has identified the 9-11 Commission staff investigator who received the Washington, DC briefing on Able Danger as Detrich Snell, currently a deputy AG to Elliott Spitzer. Steiff also suggests a Google search o Snell, which reveals that he was the lead prosecutor on the boijinka/Murad bobming case, who conveniently forgot that Murad tried to bargain what he knew about AQ bombing plots in exchange for a lighter sentence. Snell turned him down flat. None of that information turns up in the 9-11 Commission report either.
So what was Snell doing on the Commission staff as lead investigator?
Curious too, that the only one talking now from the 9-11 Commission is Hamilton. Nothing from Keane, or Ben Veniste, or Gorelick. Not even a peep from Bob Kerrey.
Over at NRO, John Podhoretz calls this the story of the year. He may well be undestating things.
Great timeline. I sort of made the inference without even checking the timing of the Berger crimes; but this is excellent work! Congratulations!
All the info I have seen shows that the decision to repress the Able Danger material was made deep in the bowels of the Pentagon and that it is extremely unlikely that any of the people on the level you are discussing ever knew anything about it. What evidence do you have Berger ever knew anything about even the existence of Able Danger?
Congratulations, Dr., for your Watcher's Council finish! Well deserved.
If you read Clarke's book, even he admits how risk averse Berger was.
The fact is, they had Osama in their sights on at least 3 occasions, and they didn't take the shot...Berger wanted to re-write history and portray himself and Clinton as tough guys by adding to or deleting notes from the record.
It is doubtful they knew the Able Danger intel.
I think you're on the right track. Too much surrounding Berger, Gorelick, and the Commission that has the smell of fish.
We are of course overlooking the possiblity of the obvious. If the AD storytellers are true Republicans, they are probably clueless, at best, or simply lying for purposes of self-aggrandizement.
There are many Republicans, in particular, who do not quite comprehend the complexity of things, like "data mining", and who may have been involved in "data dredging", retrospectively informed memories, and an active imagination.
"Data Dredging" implies imposing patterns (and particularly causal relationships) on data where none exist. This imposition of irrelevant, misleading or trivial attribute correlation is properly criticized as "data dredging" in the statistical literature. It implies scanning the data for any relationships, and then when one is found coming up with an interesting explanation.
Post- 9/11, the FBI started their search with database queries using the suspected terrorists' names and likely variants. They found the terrorists' records and then noticed the number of credit cards, addresses and the amount of debt. However, they probably would not have known in advance to look for these attributes. Furthermore, the terrorists' records probably didn't show that they had been in the country for only two years; that is knowledge the FBI brought to the search.
We also don't know how easily the observations generalize to other terrorists or how many non-terrorists have these same attributes. Combing the database for people who have a number of credit cards, big debts or multiple addresses would undoubtedly yield both criminals (most of whom aren't terrorists) and perfectly innocent folks.
Weldon said he has "been aware of the (AD) episode since shortly after the Sept. 11 attack" but "recognized the significance of the episode only recently."
So, Weldon learned of this Pentagon success shortly after 9/11, discussed it with Stephen Hadley (Condi's Deputy), but only recently realized its significance. An admission of the cluelessness aforeto mentioned.
Weldon has, since least 2002, been talking up the secret program's purported pegging of al-Qaida suspects. Weldon never mentioned Atta.
Then, of course, Shaffer admitted that he like, didn't really remember Atta personnally, but was relying on recollections of others.
Sounds great. Sounds like the Republican motto:
"Seldom in doubt, frequently wrong!"
Oh dear, I thought that was the Dem's motto. They are the intellectually superior ones after all.
I suppose we will see how this all turns out someday. Personally, I can't wait. I think that Sandy Berger was....let's see...a democrat? Wasn't he in the ...Clinton administration or something? Just a wild and crazy guy, that sandy; stealing documents from the national archives. Just for fun, I guess.
After being attacked repeatedly at work, I was in therapy most of 2000. During this year I saw what incredible lengths Epstein, Becker and Green would go to protect their foreign clients. As a result I suspected there was a sinister plot to hide the fact that Islamic jihadists were plotting to plow planes into our buildings.
I suspected that some group was intentionally trying to hide this information from those in authority who otherwise would give the orders to prevent it from happening. Having spent years overseas, I was an asset that Epstein Becker and Green were not only ignoring and neglecting but they were actively working against on behalf of a foreign client.
If this is what America has become, where foreign interests and their insurers could hire huge law firms to take care of any "trouble" then I knew America was not safe from Jihadist attackers intent on plowing planes into our buildings.
I was first made aware of the Bojinka threat back in 1995 while reading Japanese news sources. I did not think President Bush, President Clinton, Condaleezza Rice, or even Sandy Berger would have been in a position to read the same news stories as I did and been able to have reacted with the same sense of dread unless they had spent years abroad and had to take flights themselves which might have been targeted by the terrorists. (One aspect revealed about the Bojinka plot was that planes could be bombed over the Pacific after having been hijacked from Asian aiports.)
My biggest concern was that US airport security was not adequately protecting against this threat. In fact, I believed it was probable that Asian airport security post-Yousef would be better adept at protecting the flying public against a Bojinka attack. By reading Jewish community newspapers, I had a sense of the level of frustration that existed about the growth of radical Islam in the United States. By early 2001 some Jewish writers were warning about the inevitability of terror attacks in the United States as a result of the influx of middle-eastern immigrants with radical views. Instead of going to the FBI directly, I asked my therapist to relay my request to her higher-ups and to law enforcement: I told her to tell them not only to be aware of the threat of Jihadists crashing planes into our buildings (the Bojinka plot), but to be sure they were under orders to stop it.
Frankly speaking, these were concerns that Epstein, Becker, and Green could and should have known about. Epstein Becker and Green represented Willis Holdings, the insurance broker for the World Trade Center in their efforts on behalf of Larry Silverstein in his successful bid to purchase the World Trade Center.
Had I known that Epstein Becker and Green, the firm that was protecting the harassers at Awtec was also involved in securing the insurance for the World Trade Center I would have demanded that no deal be made unless our airport security and anti-terror measures had been given a clean bill of health. After all, if you or I want insurance, don't we have to succumb to tests as well?
Shocked by what I was seeing in Epstein and Becker and Green's defense of Awtec I sought out Jewish newspapers in a Southern Los Angeles library in early 2001 to understand what was happening. Reports there indicated that we were ill-prepared to stop terror attacks. And I passed this information on to my therapist as well, in hopes something could be done to reverse this course.
Epstein, Becker, and Green were only looking out for their client's financial interest while ignoring the pain and misery that such actions would inevitably bring to honest law-abiding American citizens. For example my therapist told me something I was unaware of - that I should examine my family tree more closely as if there was something extraordinary about it. In other words, someone was feeding my therapist information about my ancestry that would have the effect of making her believe I was part of an elite group. When I told her I was unaware of any unique ancestral ties she prodded me to have another look. Why, I thought, would someone be more interested in my ancestry than in my experience overseas? Or in my concerns about our national security? What was pushing my therapist to focus on this and a slew of irrelevant occurences extending back to to my childhood? Before my eyes I was being reduced to nothing but a hunk of genetic material and painted as an abberent male whose fondness for the opposite sex was innappropriate in a feminized, post-Monica age. I tried desperately to pursuade my therapist that I needed her help to stop the Arabs from crashing planes into our buildings. Americans were being dummied down by forces which cast Americans in an unfavorable light. We weren't supposed to have brains. We weren't supposed to think or ask questions. We were genetic material, nothing less, nothing more. They unique spirit of American individuality was crushed as Americans were reduced to beggars and Epstein Becker and Green and their clients became our new masters.
Commenting by HaloScan.com
