The Berger Investigation

In May 2002 and in the summer and fall of 2003, President Clinton’s former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger visited the National Archives to review highly classified documents in preparation for being interviewed by the 9/11 Commission. The documents were “code word” documents and only a very small number of people had the security clearance to view them.

It is now known on these visits Berger unlawfully removed and disposed of some of the documents he examined. In the Spring of 2005, Berger pleaded guilty to this.

We Will Never Know What He Took

The release of the Archives Inspector General’s report and the further inquiry reflected in this report now reveal the extraordinary lengths to which Berger was willing to go to deliberately compromise national security, apparently for his own convenience. The criminal case involved those documents that Berger was caught removing and ultimately admitted removing. There is no reason to doubt that those documents were forwarded to the 9/11 Commission for its use. The Justice Department and the Archives apparently accounted for them all and assured the 9/11 Commission that it received them all.

The full extent of Berger’s document removal is not known, and never can be known. On two of Berger’s four visits to the Archives, he had access to documents which had no copy and have no inventory number. These are the office files of National Security staff, including the personal office files of Clinton and Bush anti-terrorism czar Richard Clarke. They may have been lost forever.

The Department of Justice could not assure the 9/11 Commission that it received all responsive documents to which Berger had access. Additionally, the 9/11 Commission was not informed that Berger had access to original documents that he could have removed some without anyone’s knowledge.

While the personal staff files provide the greatest opportunity for missing documents, the NSC numbered documents also present a serious problem. The NSC numbered documents are only numbered at the document level, not by page. Berger could have removed portions of NSC numbered documents and the National Archives officials would never know. Because Berger was provided with so many original documents, there is no way to ever know if the 9/11 Commission received all required materials.

Deliberate

The facts of this case raise some peculiar and disturbing questions about the conduct, and more importantly, the motivations of the former National Security Advisor. For example, Berger admitted to leaving highly classified documents at a construction site near the main National Archives facility in downtown Washington, D.C. where they could have been easily found. Additionally, one of the archivists with a very high clearance level (and therefore presumably reliable) who worked on the document production for the 9/11 Commission reported that he saw Berger hiding some documents in his socks and under his pants. These acts of concealment show the lengths to which Berger was willing to deliberately go to compromise national security.

Berger’s actions portray a disturbing breach of trust and protocol that compromised the nation’s national security. This report examines the specific facts concerning Berger’s four visits to the National Archives, the lax procedures in effect at the Archives that allowed these events to unfold, the effects Berger’s actions had on the work of the 9/11 Commission, and the actions by the Department of Justice in advising the 9/11 Commission of relevant facts concerning Berger’s Archives visits.

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