You may have missed the Drudge siren yesterday, but a jury found Scooter Libby guilty on four charges yesterday, among them perjury and obstruction of justice.
But, let's be clear: these charges came about not because of the Valerie Plame "Leak", but because of the investigation of a supposed "leak". Because, as we all now know, Plame was not undercover, or even an undercover agent at the time. Therefore, it wasn't really a big state secret that she was driving a desk at Langley. Furthermore, the guy who did "leak" (even though it still wasn't illegal and by doing so no crime was committed), a State Department employee - one Richard Armitage - will not see prosecution of any sort. At all. None. CAUSE IT WASN'T A FREAKIN' CRIME!
Even so, Libby was found guilty of lying in the course of the investigation into this non-crime - the non-crime part of which has been known since the very beginning because Plame was not undercover. Which in my opinion, and please excuse my language here, if fucking stupid.
Sandy Berger sneaks classified documents out of the National Archives in his freakin' socks and pants, destroys some of those same documents, and he barely gets a slap on the hand. And that, friends, is a damn travesty of justice. And yet, Scooter Libby is going to jail for not remembering all of the details around something that WASN'T A FREAKIN' CRIME and in no way had any national security ramifications.
This news article sheds new light on the Sandy Berger "Pantsgate" scandal.
All of which leads me further to believe that Berger got off lightly and should have been stripped of any ability to ever have access to classified material again, EVER. It is reprehensible, sloppy, criminal, and downright irresponsible, what he did. Hiding documents under a construction trailer, I swear. He knew what he was doing was wrong, then he lied about it, then finally tried, when it was obvious he'd been caught, to minimize the damage.
I write to you today as a mother of a member of the next generation about an issue that can not be allowed to stand as-is if our children are to inherit peace and freedom.
I speak, of course, of the systemic “leaking” of critical national security information. It seems that I wake each morning to find some new bit of treason on the news.
As American citizens, you and I have the right to expect that our government will enforce the law. Whether that is immigration law or constitutional rules of treason, the onus is the same: we must enforce the laws or else the country will disintegrate.
I am a reasonable person. I have a working brain and a good education backing me up. I find the so-called “leaks” of information regarding the SWIFT program and the NSA wiretapping of foreign-sourced calls to be nothing short of treason. In fact, even the term “leak” is offensive to me. A leak, by definition, is an accident. These “leaks” are little more than intentional disclosures of highly classified information by people who I suspect have a political axe to grind.
Personally, I don’t give a good damn about their politics. I am concerned with security. I am concerned with an on-going war against an enemy who doesn’t wear a clearly identifiable uniform or recognize the Geneva Conventions. I am concerned, sir, that a few journalists are more concerned with chasing Pulitzers than preserving the nation for my children. I will accept no apologies from people who knowingly put my child’s future at risk. I will not. I WILL NOT. I do not abide treason. Frankly, I expect a great deal more from every American than putting personal ambition and vendettas before national security.
And it is high time something was done about it. It is past time that some of these people learned about personal responsibility and were held accountable for their actions.
Let us consider, just for a moment, what would happen if I “leaked” information in my job, shall we?
In my past job, I was privy to information on several major companies. Had I leaked any of this information, none of which endangered national security but all of which was highly confidential, at minimum I would have been fired. The company I worked for may have lost business or even have been run out of business. But I understood the concept of confidentiality and personal responsibility. I’m no leaker.
In my current job, I am privy to all kinds of highly confidential information on individuals and corporations. If I leak information now, I run afoul of the CFTC. I seriously doubt they’ll let it slide. They would prosecute me to the fullest, as I would expect them to do.
So then, why are journalists and public servants held to a lesser standard? Sandy Berger can stuff secret material in his pants and socks and sneak it out of the National Archives; journalists and public servants can publish to the world our national secrets, and nothing happens? Excuse me sir, but this is fundamentally wrong. These people, by the very nature of the importance of their jobs, should be held to a higher standard than mine, not a lesser one.
The constitutionally protected freedoms of speech and press are not absolute. You know that as well as I. In fact, anybody who has had a Civics course knows that you can’t hide behind freedom of speech when you shout “Fire” in a crowded theater. In my mind, what these public servant “leakers” and their journalist/editor/publisher accomplices have done is far, far worse: they’ve put all of us in danger, whether you live in rural Kansas, suburban Wisconsin, Manhattan, or stand a post in Baghdad.
By all accounts, these two programs were perfectly legal and highly effective. By my measure, that makes the disclosures all the more egregious. We have too few tools to fight this enemy in the way that the UN and the West expects us to, always holding ourselves to a higher standard in the fight than our enemy holds to, so it is more than unhelpful when we are hemorrhaging information at every turn. Al Qaeda doesn’t need spies if they have the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, and others. We might as well heft the white flag now if we aren’t willing to do something about the problem.
I refuse to believe that outing these secrets has not done damage to the war effort. Any weapon that your enemy doesn’t know you have is a useful weapon. As these particular tools were all about “information gathering”, I fail to see how these “leaks” don’t come under the very explicit heading of Espionage. Something needs to be done.
I entreat you, sir, to fulfill your pledge and “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic”. If you don’t, who will? My children’s future demands that we all do our duty. You need to hold these “leakers” and their enablers accountable.
No maybes, no ifs, no half-measures.
Find them. Prosecute them. And then let a jury of their peers hold them accountable.
I received an email from someone who wishes to remain anonymous. She writes:
I'm so annoyed at the supposed punishment of Sandy Berger I could spit. In today's environment which is so dependent upon security, why oh why are we not using this as an example of what will happen to the white collar terrorists as well as those who actually create the explosions?
I'm not saying he's a terrorist in the "america is evil so I want to destroy it" genre. However, I do think he cut open America's security and gave documents to someone who shouldn't have them. I'm sure the motivation was politics or money--some version of greed to be sure. While I agree we need to watch others, our greatest threat comes from inside: sleeper cells, sabotage, people who pretend to be Americans but are only there to bring it down on moral principle or to profit from demise. Would someone explain to me why there is no outrage?
I wish I could offer something that would make her feel better, but I am equally outraged. The MSM has not given this the attention it deserves, nor the attention it would have garnered if the perpetrator had been a Republican instead of a Democrat. A deal was obviously struck, and who knows what all of the politics that played out were, but I do not feel like justice has been served.
The fact remains that there appears to be two justices in the world of politics: one for Democrats and one for Republicans. If a Republican had smuggled documents out of the archives and destroyed them, the MSM would be clamoring for blood. This guy was reviewing documents to prepare to testify before the 911 Commission. He smuggled documents out in his pants, socks, and briefcase. He then lied about doing so! These were not innocent acts, nor the actions of someone who didn't know better. He used to be the freakin' national security advisor for heaven's sake! If anybody knows the proper handling procedures of secure documents, it would be he.
I don't know where the outrage is, to be honest. I don't think it was important to the MSM, so we just don't hear enough to actually garner any outrage. But I agree, the punishment was lighter than it ought to have been.
Samuel R. Berger, a national security adviser to President Bill Clinton, has agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge and give up his security clearance for three years for removing classified material from a government archive, the Justice Department and associates of Mr. Berger's said Thursday.
...
When the issue surfaced last year, Mr. Berger insisted that he had removed the classified material inadvertently. But in the plea agreement reached with prosecutors, he is expected to admit that he intentionally removed copies of five classified documents, destroyed three and misled staff members at the National Archives when confronted about it, according to an associate of Mr. Berger's who is involved in his defense but who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the plea has not been formalized in court.
...
It is unclear what impact the case will have on Mr. Berger's future in government. While the plea agreement requires him to give up his secret security clearance for three years, it allows him to have it reviewed and restored within that time if the government asks him to serve on a panel or in another position with access to secret material, associates said. But some political analysts said the case against him, which Republican leaders seized on last year in accusing him of imperiling national security, may have made him unemployable in government in the short term. He is currently chairman of a global business strategy firm.
Do you think you or I would get that sort of a deal had we done the deed? Methinks no!
I'm still working through the report on Memogate. I have a real job, what can I say? As I've been reading, two major questions have been occurring to me.
1. While the report is strongly worded and seems to place blame on the entity of CBS News as a administrative issue, it fails to identify the fact that the documents were forgeries or that there was obvious bias by the reporting parties. If you read the report, these two facts jump out at you. You don't even have to hardly ponder much about it, it is laid out pretty squarely for the reader. You don't even have to leap to come to the conclusion, it is the logical result at which you arrive. Despite this, the reasonable person rule doesn't seem to have applied to the panel. So my question then is this:
If what they have essentially handed CBS is "plausible deniability", what good are journalistic ethics anymore? When I was in school, we were taught that "balance" in reporting a story meant giving time to both sides. To begin with there is an obvious showing in the evidence that the story was sewn together only of the facts that served the endgame. All other facts were pushed aside as irrelevant or not tidy enough to fit in the box. Does this not add to the bias issue? Moreover, since Mapes continues to contend that stories are frequently made on documents that are copies, what is to keep me from creating documents that say George Washington, while crossing the Delaware, dictated a note to my great-great-great-to the nth degree uncle that I should be crowned Queen of the Western Territories in the year 2006? If they are copies, then what is to be argued? It would have been dictated, so no Geo. Washington signature, only the handwriting of a man in a boat (which one would expect to be somewhat sloppy). How would one authenticate such a document? Simply put, you can't.
Furthermore, I believe we expect a higher standard when we are discussing the Leader of the Free World. The original 60 Minutes spot was little more than character assassination. As such, somebody ought to be held responsible, and I don't mean by losing their job! The dangerous precedent has unfortunately already been set. Now, all you need is Microsoft Word 2000, a photocopier, and some creativity to make the news.
Maybe I wrote Gone With the Wind and Margaret Mitchell stole it from me and changed the names. That's all I'm saying. The standard set forth by the panel actually slides away from responsible journalism. They should have said, flat out, the documents were phony, and we expect a high degree of certainty from a news organization like CBS News, unless they are changing their image to a scandal rag. You know the types...Hillary Clinton gives birth to Elvis's Alien Love Child.
2. While the report isn't exactly a whitewash, it certainly fails to call a spade a spade, despite overwhelming evidence. That being said, suppose this same panel were to judge Sandy Berger over the Trousergate scandal. Would they similarly find Sandy didn't knowingly stuff those Federally protected documents into his pants and socks? Would they contend there was no proof he knowingly then destroyed some of the documents? What would they say to the National Archive Sting that caught Sandy Berger...red-panted? Enquiring minds want to know.
Well, I'm back in my chains. I'm about 1/2 way through the 224 pages of report on Memogate. I may have more commentary on that later. Anyhoo, I'm going through my morning surf and wanted to point out a few things to you, my faithful readers.
First up, The Noble Eagle has a lengthy essay on one Col. Hackworth, (Memogate figure) from the soldier's perspective. It is good, so point and click. Besides which, the Noble Eagle is well-positioned with his opinions as being both Air National Guard and the Army. Click here.
Chrenkoff is posting today on one of the most fascinating things, in my view, of getting older and being a fan of history. Today's central question is whether today's world leaders will ever compare to Roosevelt and Churchill. You should be reading Chrenkoff everyday, but be sure to read what he has to say and consider the question yourself. I agree with him. I think a leader is best analyzed 15-20 years after he has gone. Plenty of time for the fog to lift, personality clashes and petty politics to fade, and for the real work to be analyzed along with the results.
Cox & Forkum have a don't miss cartoon up today. It made me laugh out loud. "Does Bush eat Kittens?" Nah, no bias there. Click here.
Update: Sorry...if the markets get crazy I actually have work to do. Back to it...
Thanks to the Llamas for pointing out this news. It is high-freakin-time that somebody stuck it to Sandy Berger's pants for stealing documents from the National Archives. Too little has been done about this.
The criminal probe into why former Bill Clinton aide Sandy Berger illegally
sneaked top-secret documents out of the National Archives — possibly in his
socks — has heated up and is now before a federal grand jury, The Post has
learned.
...
Berger admits removing 40 to 50 top-secret documents from the archives, but
claims it was an "honest mistake" made while he vetted documents for the 9/11
commission's probe into the Twin Towers attacks.
Berger has also acknowledged that he destroyed some documents — he says
by accident.
...
Some Republicans, such as House Speaker Dennis Hastert, have charged that
Berger pilfered the documents because they were embarrassing to Clinton and
Clinton aides such as Berger.
...
The probe was touched off last spring when stunned archives staffers
reported seeing Berger sneak classified documents out of a top-secret reading
room in his pants and socks while vetting Clinton-era items for the commission.
They then ran a sting operation in which they coded some documents and
confirmed they were missing when Berger left.
The documents were classified Code Word, the highest security
classification, above Top Secret.
The commission report makes clear that Berger had a habit of writing
candid notes in the margin of memos, sometimes flatly rejecting plans for
action.
He nixed a plan to capture Osama bin Laden with one word: "No."
I believe the segment presented to the American people facts they were free to
accept or reject, and that as those facts were presented, there was nothing that
was false or misleading. I am heartened to see that the panel found no political
bias on my part, as indeed I have none.
I respond to this drivel by saying, "Dude, we frickin' did reject it! Ya'll continued to hold by the "story". No political bias? Did you even read the report? Lady, you are wacked! Stop smoking your lattes."
And, naturally, no coverage of Memogate would be complete without Power Line. Too much to link. Read it yourself.
