Sandy Bergergate

Is he advising Hillary Clinton or isn't he?

Almost a month ago, it was noted by Michael Hirsh of Newsweek that Sandy Berger was an integral part of Hillary's campaign advisory team.

Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, has relied largely on her husband and a triumvirate of senior officials from his presidency—former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, former U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke and former national-security adviser Sandy Berger (who tries to keep a low profile after pleading guilty in 2005 to misdemeanor charges of taking classified material without authorization).

Yesterday, another report stated that Berger was back, this one by Bill Sammon in The Examiner.

Sandy Berger, who stole highly classified terrorism documents from the National Archives, destroyed them and lied to investigators, is now an adviser to presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Berger, who was fired from John Kerry’s presidential campaign when the scandal broke in 2004, has assumed a similar role in Clinton’s campaign, even though his security clearance has been suspended until September 2008. This is raising eyebrows even among Clinton’s admirers.

Hillary Clinton's camp is denying that Bill Clinton's former national security adviser Sandy Berger is officially part of the former First Lady's presidential campaign team.

WASHINGTON -- Hillary Clinton claims Sandy Berger has "no official role" in her campaign after Republican lawmakers blasted her Monday upon learning that Clinton's campaign is taking advice from the former top aide to President Bill Clinton who admitted stealing classified documents and disposing them.

...The New York Democrat's campaign downplayed the fact, saying Monday that Berger is an informal, unpaid adviser to the campaign, something ascribed to many people associated with the campaign. Berger has been a longtime friend of both Clintons.

"He has no official role in the campaign," spokesman Blake Zeff said.

Aides to the New York Democrat were unapologetic about Berger's advisory role, noting he is not a central figure but has valuable and welcome input that he is providing voluntarily.

Yeah, yeah, right.

No official role, blah, blah, blah.

I don't buy it that he's not a central figure.

Good grief, look at what Berger did for the Clintons.

On the evening of Oct. 2, 2003, former White House national security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger stashed highly classified documents he had taken from the National Archives beneath a construction trailer at the corner of Ninth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW so he could surreptitiously retrieve them later and take them to his office, according to a newly disclosed government investigation.

The documents he took detailed how the Clinton administration had responded to the threat of terrorist attacks at the end of 1999. Berger removed a total of five copies of the same document without authorization and later used scissors to destroy three before placing them in his office trash, the National Archives inspector general concluded in a Nov. 4, 2005, report.

After archives officials accused him of taking the documents, Berger told investigators, he "tried to find the trash collector but had no luck." But instead of admitting he had removed them deliberately -- by stuffing them in his suit pockets on multiple occasions -- Berger initially said he had removed them by mistake.

It gets even weirder.

In September and October, Berger was able to sneak papers -- slight variations of a report titled "Millennium Alert After Action Review," which looked at U.S. vulnerabilities to terrorists, as well as the notes he took from other classified documents -- into his pockets, the report said, because an unnamed senior official left the room while Berger made or took phone calls.

Although one archives official claimed to have seen Berger fiddling with what appeared to be a piece of paper "rolled around his ankle and underneath his pant leg," Berger told investigators he was merely pulling up his socks, which he said "frequently fall down." He said "this story was absurd and embarrassing."

Berger said that after spending hours at the archives on Oct. 2, he took a walk outside past a construction fence to leave four classified copies of the millennium document beneath a trailer. He later explained that he needed to return to the building for several additional hours of work and was worried that guards would see the documents bulging in his suit.

Berger got caught partly because suspicious archives employees secretly numbered the millennium document copies they showed him in October. When an official challenged him by telephone on Oct. 4, he turned over two copies of the millennium document that he said he had accidentally kept.

Of course Republicans blasted Hillary for utilizing the services of Berger.

HE'S A CROOK.

And of course, the Hillary campaign is pretending that Berger isn't a central figure in its advisory team.

I guess that technically may be true.

It would depend on what the meaning of "central" is. And it would depend on what the meaning of every other word is, including "is."

I'm glad Republicans commented on Hillary and Berger. Regardless of Berger's role in Hillary's campaign, I think Republicans should be calling attention to the Berger incident. When a former national security adviser hides highly classified documents stolen from the National Archives at a construction site, that's a problem.

It's important to remind Americans what a Hillary Clinton presidency would entail. In many ways, it would be a resumption of the Bill Clinton era. It would be a third term. It would be a continuation of all that sleaze.

I think it's embarrassing that the Hillary campaign is downplaying Berger's role as adviser, saying he's just an unpaid, informal helper, a volunteer.

Who cares if Berger is serving only as an unpaid buddy?

The status that's relevant is that he's a crook and Hillary has him as part of her inner circle.

That matters.