Sandy Berger: Idiot

[Preechr]

Come on, guys! You have got to see that the issue is not what he took but WHY he knowingly violated security protocols. It was a huge risk for him to take, and the excuse that he has always been such a sloppy person that when he served as NSA for Clinton they had to give him a team of secretaries to keep him organized... well, doesn't that pretty much indicate he wasn't exactly suited to do that job effectively?

The very first articles on the topic said most of the documents were copies, and any originals he had access to were stored elsewhere as copies, and that his actions in no way concealed any information from anyone that needed to see it. The issue is not any access by anyone cleared to see the stuff he took, it's that you simply do not take this stuff home with you.

Does Sandy Berger still have any sort of security clearance at all now? I just can't see how he could. If not, he'll never be able to hold another executive branch position, and he knew that was at risk when he took those documents. I suppose it's possible that a future Democrat's administration might be able to swing him some status he has proven to no longer deserve, but do we want a government that can forcibly bend the rules that much?

Think about it. There's a very good reason these documents are guarded so heavily. The after-action report they're talking about is just not something you'd want to see in the hands of someone who might be willing to plan a similar attack on America. I'm sure it highlights many security holes that could have been exploited, and we all know government's not so quick about fixing things like that. Sandy doesn't have to be proven an actual "spy" here so much as it's obvious that his carelessness obviates the need to deny him access to secret information in the future. He is a huge security hole that can easily, and obviously should, be patched.

If those documents were disposed of within government, they'd be burned or shredded into pulp (not just ribbons.) Sandy says he probably threw them away at home (or somewhere, he doesn't recall.) Do we want this guy handling this material in the future? If Condoleeza Rice was the one caught doing this, would you say she was just the victim of smear attacks?

I just can't believe he thought he would ever have a job in any future possible after being caught, and I can't believe he thought he'd get away with it... He knew the rules and the consequences of breaking them. WHAT was so important? WHY would he do this? WHY so many copies of the same report, and if he thought he was removing uncopied originals (which is VERY doubtful*,) what purpose could that have served?

-------------------------------
*Everything is copied so many times it's about impossible to believe he might have thought he was removing all of the evidence of something. Why so many copies of the same thing then? It makes no sense...
-------------------------------

The members of the Republican Attack Machine that are making ridiculous accusations about this are simply trying to keep this in the news in order to gain political points for the election. They are not necessarily obligated to explain how security really works to a press corps too damn lazy to look up the details for themselves, so they simplify the issues for shock value.

The real question is to what end would Sandy Berger remove himself from government permanently, and if he had some sort of assurances from the Dems that these violations could be overlooked, what does that say about the state of government security in our future? I also can't help but wonder if this investigation is going to look back at his "sloppiness" when he served as NSA and what kind of security problems he could have caused back then. He had access to EVERYTHING. If this is a long established pattern of behavior for him, that's a pretty serious problem.