The "mainstream" news outlets have been fairly busy lately, spinning the story of the investigation into Sandy Berger's adventures in the National Archives. Whether that's because Berger was former President Bill Clinton's National Security Advisor or because he was an advisor to John Kerry's campaign at the time, we may never know. Berger was billed as a "chief foreign policy advisor" to Kerry until he quit, whereupon he was retroactively demoted to an "informal advisor." While researching in the Archives for his appearance before the 9/11 inquisition, Berger stole documents from the secure document viewing room by sneaking them out hidden in his pants and socks (according to what Archive staffers told the FBI), as well as his jacket and briefcase. Not just once, but three times, Berger removed classified papers and took them home.

The National Archives is not like your local library, and the secure reading rooms are supposed to be kept, well, secure. No documents brought into those rooms for viewing may be removed except by Archive staff. Notes taken on those documents may not be removed either. Documents relating to the nation's response to terror attacks contain details on the inner workings of government that must not be seen by anyone not authorised to do so. Berger's actions were not only illegal, but also potentially dangerous.

One of the documents Sandy Berger was reportedly examining was Richard Clarke's after-action report on the Clinton administration's response to the Millennium bombing plot. For those who don't know, a car packed with explosives was stopped on the Canada border on New Year's Eve 1999 by an alert border guard who thought the driver seemed jittery. Ahmed Ressam was on his way to blow up the control tower at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). The guard wasn't forewarned to watch for potential terrorists by an alert; she was simply good at her job and extraordinarily lucky. According to Janet Reno, in her testimony before the 9/11 commission, "I think that was just good police work, and it was a lucky break for us." The after-action report was reported to be quite critical of Clinton's lackluster response to this and other terrorist attacks. This and other supposedly secure documents made their way, secreted in Berger's clothing, to his home in Arlington. The FBI began investigating when it was discovered that some documents were missing, and found some of the missing documents in Berger's home, on his desk. Some were missing, and Berger claims that he "inadvertently took a few documents from the Archives" and "accidentally discarded" a few of them. Nobody has been able to explain how one can "inadvertently" stuff papers into one's pants and socks and then, upon discovering them, "accidentally" discard them instead of returning them.

The mainstream media isn't interested in Berger's illegal and potentially disastrous actions, however, nor his repeated breach of security and protocol. Berger excused himself by saying, "I deeply regret the sloppiness involved, but I had no intention of withholding documents from the commission." This is entirely believable; the fact that most of what Berger stole were copies of documents can only mean that he took them to share their contents with someone not authorised to view them. Clinton laughed off the breach of national security, saying, "all of us who've been in his office have always found him buried beneath papers." Is that really good enough? If Berger was the sort of sloppy bumbler who might inadvertently leave classified documents lying about or even destroy them, what was he doing in charge of our national security for so many years? Was his "sloppiness" somehow responsible for letting al-Qaeda go unpunished after bombing the Khobar Towers, bombing the embassies in Dar es Salaam and Kenya, and attacking the USS Cole? Why did he take the documents, and did it have anything to do with his position as a campaign advisor to John Kerry? These questions remain unasked as the Liberal lapdog media, following the Democrat lead, focuses on the timing of the "leak" of the investigation, accepting without question that the Republicans did it to draw attention away from the Democrat convention in Boston. "The timing is very curious, given this has been underway now for this long," said Senate minority leader Tom Daschle (D-SD), and THAT'S the story the press is telling.

They've done this before, remember? In October 2003, a memo from Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith to the Senate Intelligence Committee became public. The memo, an annotation to his testimony before the Committee, summarised details of an operational relationship between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden gathered by various intelligence agencies since the early 1990's. The media, quickly playing down the real story, concentrated on a rather misleading press release from the Department of Defense which stated, "reports that the Defense Department recently confirmed new information with respect to contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq in a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee are inaccurate." The statement was "interpreted" by the press, desperately clinging to its "no cooperation" stance, to mean that the memo itself was inaccurate. In November 2003, talk show host Sean Hannity broke the story of a memo from a staffer to Senate Intelligence Committee member Jay Rockefeller. The Rockefeller memo discussed the timing of the investigation into pre-Iraq war intelligence in such a way as to cause the maximum embarrassment to President Bush during his re-election campaign. The memo recommended that Democrats "prepare to launch an investigation when it becomes clear we have exhausted the opportunity to usefully collaborate with the [Senate] majority. We can pull the trigger on an independent investigation of the administration's use of intelligence at any time -- but we can only do so once ... the best time would probably be next year." Another memo revealed the reason for Democratic opposition to Miguel Estrada's appointment to the 6th Circuit Court. "He is dangerous," the memo read, "because he is Latino." Rather than ask how the Democrats could dare to politicise their intelligence investigation for political gain, or question their blatant racism, the media launched a campaign to "out" the leaker.

Once again, the "mainstream" news sources are acting to divert attention from what should be the real story: the Democrats have become so hungry to regain power that they willingly put this country at risk in order to do so.