In looking at the capers of the Clintons’ cronies, if Americans believed the rule of law is at stake, it would be hard to blame them.
By all accounts, the unannounced FBI raid on former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence is unprecedented in U.S. history. What does have a precedent, however, is the theft and destruction of sensitive government materials by former presidential advisors. Consider, for example, former Clinton National Security Advisor Samuel “Sandy” Berger.
The Cornell and Harvard Law grad met Bill and Hillary Clinton in 1972 while serving as a speechwriter for George McGovern. During their 1992 campaign, the Clintons tapped Berger as their top foreign policy adviser and, once in the office named him deputy national security advisor under Anthony Lake.
In 1997, the Clintons promoted Berger to National Security Advisor, and he was heavily involved in advising the president on the terrorist attacks on the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia and U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Berger was unable to prevent those attacks but he did gain fame on the home front.
Berger served as a representative to the 9/11 Commission, which gave him special access to classified material about the Clintons’ record on terrorism. In 2004, several months before his testimony, Berger slipped into the National Archives and ripped off classified documents and notes. The former National Security Advisor, a kind of Agent Double-O $2.98, stuffed documents into his pants and wrapped some papers around his socks. Berger stashed the stolen material on a construction site then returned to retrieve it.
This was a serious crime, but Berger cut a deal with the Justice Department to stay of jail, pay a $50,000 fine, and avoid a full explanation of what he had ripped off. No word of any sudden raids or other actions by the FBI. Berger also lost his security clearance but the matter did not end there. As Ronald A. Cass noted in 2007, the D.C. Bar began to probe what Berger had stolen and why he stole it.
To keep from answering those questions, Berger duly surrendered his law license. For Cass, author of The Rule of Law in America, that decision confirmed Berger “must be hiding something important. And if it is that important to him, it is also important to us.” Most likely, the stolen material “points to a terrible mistake by Berger himself, by President Clinton, or by both” in failing to stop al-Qaeda.