Why did he do it? It doesn’t seem to make much sense on the face of it.
They showed the location of the WMDs?
He felt they would help his defense.
People get powerful to the point where they feel they’re above the rules.
- In what way would they help his defense?
- Why not just make photocopies if that were the case?
- Why did he then destroy the copies he stole?
He apparently was trying to destroy any and all copies of the documents. To me, that sounds like he thoughts the documents were going to harm him.
Wow, I hadn’t heard that. That is pretty strange.
How would they help his defense? I thought he was on trial for stealing the docs in the first place.
There was something incriminating to him and/or the Clintons. Since the documents were destroyed we’ll never know for sure what was in them. I can’t think of any other reason he’d do something so risky.
He wasn’t on trial; he was appearing before the 9/11 Commission to give testimony about, and presumably defend, the Clinton Administration’s counterterrorism efforts.
No originals were destroyed, only copies. Not a single bit of information was lost. Obviously, he wasn’t destroying evidence (despite the hopeful fantasies of the right). It looks like he panicked after he took some copies with him (why? Who knows? I don’t really care. It was basically harmless). Then, after he realized the nosy, busy body archive staff had been spying on him and ratted him out, he panicked and tried to get rid of them.
I have no idea why he took them home, but there’s little likelihood it could have been for very insidious reasons.
Cite? All of the original documents still exist. Which one contains incrimnating evidence.
From The Washington Post:
From the Los Angeles Times:
In addition, there were apparently handwritten notes on some of the copies, and those are lost.
His attorney says no originals were lost. There is no evidence that his attorney is lying. The insinuations of Tom Davis are not evidence.
Handwriiten by who? Berger himself? So what?
“Harmless”? “Nosy, busy body archive staff”? “Spying”?
Is this a joke post? I don’t care about left or right, but I do deeply care about the intergity and sanctity of historical archives. If someone was screwing around with NA documents, I hope they throw the book at them. If you think the archives people are overreacting, do a web search and read a little about the selfish weasel who went around lifting priceless maps from research collections a few years ago. Once stuff like that is gone, it is usually gone forever.
Nothing was lost or destroyed. Nothing was tampered with. Nothing was compromised. Nobody saw any copies but Berger himself. The integrity of the archives is fine. There’s no reason to get worked up.
The only person who claims that “nothing was lost or destroyed” is Berger’s attorney, his paid advocate. No one else with the authority to know is making that generous claim.
No one is asserting anything to the contrary and Berger does not have the burden of proof. There is no good reason to believe anything was compromised.
None of these documents were particularly sensitive anyway.
From the AP story link
So, Berger had been there before, and was believed to have been taking documents on those occasions. The time he got caught, the staff set him up by making copies of some documents.
This implies pretty strongly that he could have removed originals on previous trips. No one will ever know as the NA can’t possibly track all of their documents.