Albany Democrat-Herald Editorial: Berger flap was overplayed

[kskiska]

So the Berger affair apparently was just another Washington flap, drummed up to make political points and blown out of proportion because the press had a slow day.

The Wall Street Journal reported on the matter last Friday, although hardly anybody else mentioned it. An e-mail from Portland pointed it out to the D-H.

As you'll recall, a couple of weeks ago Samuel "Sandy" Berger, the former national security adviser in the Clinton administration, was accused of having taken classified material home from the National Archives, which is against the law. He had obtained access to the material in order to answer questions from the 9/11 Commission.

On Friday the Journal reported that officials looking into this admittedly unauthorized removal of classified material had reported that "no original materials are missing and nothing Mr. Berger reviewed was withheld from the commission ..."

(snip)

The story was on the front page of our paper when it broke. It evidently didn't merit that kind of play. It was not important. And if it was interesting, it was interesting only as an example of how politics sometimes works to distort harmless events.

more…
http://www.democratherald.com/articles/2004/08/03/news/opinion/edit01.txt

[coda]

1. So has our National Archive become as partisan as the Exec Branch?

If these people went to the trouble of marking materials as though they were working a sting, then how did they get it so wrong?

Or did it simply serve, by design, a short term diversion of taking the spotlight off of the release of the 911 Commission's report?