Who Can Really Say?

Berger Update

No, not this kind of update.

I mean the kind where new information comes to light, which happened last week when the WSJ ran a short bit on Sandy Berger's guilty plea for misdemeanoriously removing classified documents from the National Archives. (This is playing catch-up for me, but I didn't blog over the weekend and since I've commented on Berger recently enough I thought, to be fair, that I ought to keep at it at least if the news is, well, new.)

From the Journal:

On Wednesday, we quoted Justice Department prosecutor Noel Hillman that no original documents were destroyed, and that the contents of all five at issue still exist and were made available to the 9/11 Commission. But that point didn't register with some readers, who continue to suggest a vast, well, apparently a vast left- and right-wing conspiracy. The Washington Times, the Rocky Mountain News and former Clintonite Dick Morris have also been peddling dark suspicions based on misinformation.

The confusion seems to stem from the mistaken idea that there were handwritten notes by various Clinton Administration officials in the margins of these documents, which Mr. Berger may have been able to destroy. But that's simply an "urban myth," prosecutor Hillman tells us, based on a leak last July that was "so inaccurate as to be laughable." In fact, the five iterations of the anti-terror "after-action" report at issue in the case were printed out from a hard drive at the Archives and have no notations at all.

"Those documents, emphatically, without doubt--I reviewed them myself--don't have notations on them," Mr. Hillman tells us. Further, "there is no evidence after comprehensive investigation to suggest he took anything other than the five documents at issue and they didn't have notes." Mr. Berger's sentencing is scheduled for July, and Mr. Hillman assures us Justice's sentencing memo will lay out the facts and "make sure Mr. Berger explains what he did and why he did it." Meanwhile, conservatives don't do themselves any credit when they are as impervious to facts as the loony left.

This leaves me thoroughly confused. Is a Federal Prosecutor proposing that the Washington Post publishes urban myths? John at Powerline isn't buying Hillman (the WaPo link just before is dead but you can read the key parts at the Powerline link):

I don't see how this can be squared with what Hillman is now telling us. Why would Berger remove five identical copies of the same report, shred three of them with a pair of scissors, and return the other two to the archives? And why, as he has now admitted, would he lie about such conduct? And, if Berger shredded three of the copies, how can Hiillman have seen them to verify that they contained no notes? If Hillman's current account is correct, Berger sounds like a candidate for a psychiatric ward, not for Secretary of State.

Hillman says the truth will come out when Berger is sentenced. Let's hope so. For now, consider me unconvinced. And what's with the Journal's recent habit of unfairly blasting conservatives in unsigned editorials?

Yeah, what's with that recent habit thing? Oh, never mind.

Is it just me, or does anyone else feel that the more we read and hear of this story, the less we know of it? So, as they say -- developing.

Posted by Peter at April 12, 2005 08:52 PM