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Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Jan. 25, 2007 / 6 Shevat, 5767

Sock it to him

By Bob Tyrrell


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | I guess 3,500 classified documents would be too many to stuff into your clothing if you were a high-ranking government official and wanted to take them home for leisure reading. Perhaps that explains why this week one of the State Department's most knowledgeable experts on China, Donald W. Keyser, a Foreign Service officer with three decades of experience, was sentenced to a year in the hoosegow after these documents were found in his Fairfax County residence. Keyser claimed he had just been "careless." Without the comic touch of stuffing the documents into one's clothing, being "careless" with classified materials is apparently a serious offense. So off to the hoosegow Keyser will go.


The Clinton administration's former national security adviser, Samuel R. (Sandy) Berger, claimed carelessness too after he was nabbed for taking classified materials home from the National Archives, where in 2002 and 2003 he had been preparing to testify before the 9/11 Commission. Among his documents were draft documents, memos, e-mail messages and handwritten notes, some from the Clinton administration's counterterrorism expert, Richard A. Clarke. These would be very relevant to the Commission's deliberations.


Employees of the Archives espied the chubby Berger stuffing the documents into his socks. He claimed that he had accidentally mixed the classified papers in with his other papers when he left the Archives. Apparently Bill Clinton's national security adviser was given to carrying his personal papers in his socks. That would be in keeping with the administration's dog patch ambiance. Carrying an attache case might have been eschewed as "elitist."


At any rate, in April 2005 Berger got off, pleading to merely a misdemeanor. He was fined $50,000 and barred from access to the Archives for three years. After that, perhaps the archivists will require that he remove his socks before being given classified material, or maybe he will allay the staff's concerns by wearing flip flops.


Yet now Berger's story has taken a more serious turn. As part of his 2005 plea agreement, Berger promised to take a lie detector test. He never did. This week in a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, 18 Republican congressmen have asked that the Justice Department proceed with the polygraph testing of Berger. It is more critical today than it might have been back in April of 2005. This autumn a congressional committee made an astounding discovery regarding the contents of Berger's socks. The Archives had failed to catalogue the materials that they gave him to review. No one aside from Berger has any idea what he took from the Archives. He may have doctored documents. He may have destroyed documents. There have been many distinguished former government officials who lived to write their version of the history they participated in. Berger is the rare government official who has lived to erase history. A polygraph test might reveal how much history he erased.


Berger's lawyer, a veteran Clinton smog artist, Lanny Breuer, insists there is no "evidence" that his client did anything wrong. That is classic Clinton obfuscation. Berger was caught stealing classified documents from the National Archives. For a former national security adviser to do such a thing is without precedent. It now has been revealed that the Archives had not catalogued the materials it gave him. There is no precedent on the public record for that either. Berger is also a proven liar. All this constitutes "evidence" that Berger has done something very wrong. A lie detector test may give us a sense of how much wrong he did. Moreover, taking the test was part of Berger's 2005 agreement. He should live up to his agreement and take the test. The Justice Department should enforce the rule of law and make him take the test.


Yet as we have seen since the 1990s, there is a peculiar double standard in the country — one very lax and capricious rule obtains for the Clintons and their servitors, and another duly exacting rule for the rest of us. Former State Department official Keyser is numbered among the rest of us. He was a top adviser to former Secretary of State Colin Powell — so off to the hoosegow with him. He is disgraced and Berger is standing gloriously among us in his stocking feet.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

JWR contributor Bob Tyrrell is editor in chief of The American Spectator. Comment by clicking here.

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