May 23, 2009
JudicialWatch.org
Another egregious security breach involving the Clinton Administration has occurred at the National Archives, this time the mysterious disappearance of a computer disc containing highly sensitive government files.
The disc containing national security information was lost sometime between October 2008 and March 2009 and its disappearance was finally made public this week by a lawmaker who sits on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Federal authorities and Congress have launched a probe into the matter, which they had planned to keep private.
The missing disc contained Secret Service and White House operating procedures as well as other highly sensitive information from the Bill Clinton Administration. Among the files were 100,000 Social Security numbers, contact information for administration officials, detailed logs of events, political records and social gatherings. The full extent of the contents of the drive is still being investigated.
Security at the National Archives, which keeps official documents and materials of federal government business, has long been a joke. The archive inspector general has previously blasted its lack of internal controls, revealing that even the "secure" areas that house sensitive information are susceptible to breach.
This evidently allowed Clinton's national security advisor, Sandy Berger, to remove highly classified terrorism documents from the archives as he prepared to testify before the September 11 Commission in 2003. Berger easily stole the files, hid them under a construction trailer and later tried to get a trash collector to retrieve them.
After initially denying he committed the crime, Berger pleaded guilty to unlawfully removing the classified files and got a tiny slap on the hand; a $50,000 fine, 100 hours of community service and a three-year ban from accessing classified material. The Justice Department subsequently determined that the full extent of what Berger took will never be known.
Follow up on previous story regarding Sandy Berger - see below:
Sandy Berger Compromised National Security
The Justice Department cannot guarantee that Bill Clinton's national security advisor did not remove original copies of highly classified terrorism documents from the National Archives and the full extent of what he actually took will never be known.
A 61-page report released this week by the House of Representatives sheds even more light into the seriousness of Sandy Berger's crimes when he stole the sensitive documents from the Archives in 2003.
Details of Berger's premeditated crime were released last month in a lengthy report issued by the National Archives Inspector General, but this latest Congressional document concludes that the country may never know the full effect of Berger's misconduct and that his deliberate calculating actions to remove highly classified documents compromised the national security of this country in more ways than one.
The report goes on to reveal the extraordinary lengths to which Berger was willing to go to deliberately compromise national security for his own convenience. It also accuses the former national security advisor of taking advantage of the serious weaknesses in controls over classified documents.
In late December an Archives Inspector General report documented how Berger collaborated with a trash collector to steal the documents that he used to prepare for testimony, on behalf of the Clinton Administration, before the September 11 Commission.
Although he initially said it was an honest mistake, Berger eventually pleaded guilty to unlawfully removing the classified files and got a tiny slap on the hand; a $50,000 fine, 100 hours of community service and a three-year bar from accessing classified material.
