Sandy Burgler: Something Stinks

What is an aide to President Clinton doing lurking around, stuffing papers down his pants, stealing and stashing them at a construction site, and just generally acting weird? I don't think those questions were answered with his $50,000 conviction and 100 hours of public service.

Pardon me for going all conspiracy theorist, but something stinks. Josh Gerston via Instapundit says it looks like Berger was engaging in a classic spy drop:

A leading authority on classification policy, Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, said Mr. Berger's behavior was reminiscent of a "dead drop," when spies leave records in a park or under a mailbox to be retrieved by a handler.

"It seems deliberate and calculated," Mr. Aftergood said. "It's impossible to maintain the pretense that this was an act of absentmindedness."

All five documents Mr. Berger removed were versions of an after-action report about the foiled "millennium plot" to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport and other sites. The internal review, by a top counterterrorism official, Richard Clarke, reportedly found that luck was the major factor in disrupting the plot and that more attacks were likely.

What bothers me is the utter lack of curiosity on the part of the powers that be. I've come to accept as the norm the Mass Media's disinterest and bland apathetic acceptance of all things nefarious Democrat. But why would an administration at war not be more concerned about a former National Security Advisor acting spy-like? Betsy says this:

Shouldn't the media have been more interested in knowing why he took such a risk in stealing classified documents? What was in those documents? Why did this story go nowhere at the time and we're just finding out these new details because the Associated Press filed a FOIA request? Why didn't all the media outlets want to know that information? after all, these were documents that he was reviewing in order to talk to the 9/11 Commission about security measures taken in the time before 9/11. No one really seems to have cared that there was something that Berger wanted to steal and destroy regarding that period.

Shouldn't people be outraged about this? Why did the Bush Justice Department let him get away with just a slap on the wrist? What about the whole idea that top officials should be punished more severely when they break the law as an example to other potential malefactors? Would some less exalted person who stole classified documents and destroyed them get away with a fine, community service, and a three-year loss of his national security clearance? I doubt it.

This story has popped up again because the redacted report was made available to AP. It will start conservatives talking for a couple of days and then it will go away. Sandy Berger will continue with his consulting business and no one will care. It really was an outrage.

She's right that it will go away. And that's crazy. I want to know WHY the wrist slap? I swear, if I didn't know better, the Clinton clan has some dirt on GW because his administration sure handles these people with kid gloves.

I'm outraged, that's for sure. While it seems plausible that Berger would sticky-finger the Classified documents for the former criminal-in-chief, maybe it's too plausible. We all know the Clintons will do anything legal or illegal to position Hillary to win in '08. But it's like a doctor getting side-tracked with an obvious symptom only to ignore the potentially lethal underlying problem. Are we sure we know what underlying problem Sandy Berger was trying to solve?