RUSH: Let’s go to the audio sound bites. It’s the Sandy Burglar case. We have got some sound bites here on how this is being reacted to in the Drive-By Media, and also some more details here from research that we did going back to 2004 when this thing all broke. Surprisingly CNN did a fairly good report on this on the Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. We have a montage of the reporter’s report. Her name is Kelly Arena.
ARENA: In 2003 Berger snuck papers out of the Archives building, all of them describing the Clinton administration’s reaction to the terrorist plot to attack in 2000. He says he walked out of the National Archives building with the documents stuffed in his pockets. It was dark, and he headed this way. He looked up and down the street, and then back at the windows of the National Archives Building, then at the Department of the Justice, which just happens to be across the street. There was some construction going on right back here. Berger says that he went through the security fence, and he placed the documents under a construction trailer, then he made his way back into the building to continue his work. When Berger got the documents home, he cut three of them into small pieces and put them in the trash. Two days later when he was confronted about the missing documents, he says he tried to find the trash collector, but had no luck. At first, Berger said he must have removed the documents accidentally or inadvertently. Later on, he came clean.
RUSH ARCHIVE: If it had happened to them or anybody else, they would not have gotten away with this without having spent some serious time in jail.
RUSH: She put that in her report on CNN. That’s me from yesterday’s program. Of course Burglar was out there saying, that was inadvertently, accidentally, hiding them underneath this construction trailer. Yesterday had several callers here challenging me on my speculation of what the document was. Berger himself admitted it in the Washington Post in 2004, I think June 20th, 21st, or July 20th or 21st. Whatever it was, it was the Millennium After Action Review. All the details around this document theft may not be known for years, but you can go back and research some various things that were written about this in 2004, and you can learn quite a bit. “Previous statements and testimony suggest the Clinton administration was well aware or should have been of an Al-Qaeda cell operating within the United States in 1999.
“It was suggested that the administration act to take it out. Not only did the Clinton administration fail to act, they failed to pass that information along to the incoming Bush administration. John Ashcroft made this much clear in his testimony before the 9/11 Commission.” Now, in a — I don’t want to say perfect world, but in a — different world, all of this involving Sandy Burglar and Al-Qaeda and all of these cells that the Clinton administration knew were in the country and didn’t do anything about and didn’t pass the information on to the Bush administration, should be devastating to the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. She should be asked about this at every campaign appearance. It was thought, by the way, that this whole thing with Sandy Burglar would be damaging to the Kerry presidential candidacy. Why? Because Sandy Burglar was an advisor to the Kerry campaign at the time the theft took place, and the Democrats were fighting an image of being weak on terrorism, an image that they have earned and an image that survives to this day. Burglar was working for Kerry at the time! So the theories that were running around, “Uh-oh, maybe he did something here to spare the Democrats any embarrassment that could impact negatively on the Kerry campaign,” or that he was legacy protecting for Bill Clinton and the entire Clinton administration.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: All right, here we have four basic stories here on the sadden thing, just to remind you and put it all in context. “The National Security Council’s Millennium After Action Review,” this is the document that Sandy Burglar went in and took and did things to, “declares that the United States barely missed major terrorist attacks in 1999 with luck playing a major role. Among the many vulnerabilities in homeland defenses identified, the justice department surveillance and FISA operations were specifically criticized for their glaring weaknesses. It is clear from this review,” the National Security Council Millennium After Action Review, “that actions taken in the millennium period [Y2K] should not be the operating model for the US government.”
People have seen that portion of the document, that’s what it says. This takes us back to the thwarted to have a terrorist incident at LAX, thwarted by an on-the-spot Customs agent, and the Clinton people were trying to say — and we have a quote from Clinton yesterday, a little sound bite from 2004 — (Clinton impression) “Well, we did a great job on that. Our plan really worked well. We got it. We got it.” But the plan had nothing to do with it! It was just a good agent, an extremely competent agent. Now… “In March of 2000 the Millennium After Action Review warns the prior administration [Clinton] of a substantial Al-Qaeda network and affiliated foreign terrorist presence within the US capable of supporting additional terrorist attacks here. Furthermore, fully 17 months before the September 11th attacks, the review recommends disrupting the Al-Qaeda network and terrorist presence in America using immigration violations, minor criminal infractions, and tougher visa and border controls.”
None of this was done and this leads to conjecture that Sandy Burglar went in and tried to doctor the documents somehow so as to make this not appear the case. Byron York writing at National Review Online in May of 2004: “Justice also knew,” the justice department also knew, “that the Clinton administration had done an after action review of the millennium matter, a study conducted by none other than Richard Clarke. ‘The review was a scathing indictment of the last administration’s actions,'” said the administration’s source talking to Byron York. “‘It was exactly how things should not be run and in fact Richard Clarke himself is quite critical of the handling of the millennium plot in his book ‘Against All Enemies.’ The virtue of Ashcroft’s testimony is that he came out and said it.
“‘This National Security Council Millennium After Action Review declares,'” This is Ashcroft speaking in his testimony, “‘that the United States barely missed major terrorist attacks in 1999 and cites luck as playing a major role, according to Ashcroft’s testimony. It’s clear from the review that actions taken in the millennium period, Y2K should not be the operating model for the US government.'” WorldNetDaily, a piece from 2004: “In testimony before the 9/11 Commission in April John Ashcroft pointed to a National Security Council document now at the center of the FBI’s investigation of Sandy Berger, urging the panel to ask why its warnings and blueprint to thwart Al-Qaeda plans to target the US were ignored by the Clinton administration and not shared with the incoming Bush security staff.” So I’m on the third source here.
We’ve got four sources basically all analyzing the Millennium After Action Review the same way: that it was blind luck… Well, no offense to the Customs agent in Seattle, but it wasn’t any federal policy that led to the breakup of that attempted terrorist incident at LAX. It was just a competent agent, that the Clinton administration knew of an Al-Qaeda presence, didn’t do anything about it, and didn’t pass on the extensive nature of the Al-Qaeda existence to the Bush administration. “Drafts of the sensitive NSC Millennium After Action Review,” this is still WorldNetDaily, “on the Clinton administration’s handling of Al-Qaeda terror threats during the December 1999 millennium celebration are reported to be among the documents still missing from classified materials Berger removed from a secure reading room.” Now, again, you go back to motivations. What would Berger’s motivations be?
He was working for Kerry at the time, and he could have been trying to get something out of there that would show up in the 9/11 transcripts or hearings or testimony that would make Democrats look soft on terror and uncaring about it, which would thus confirm an image that the Democrats have earned, and thus negatively impact the Kerry campaign, or he could have been just going in there and trying to preserve the legacy of the Clinton administration and their lack of effort in fighting terrorism, or it could have been a combination of the two, and then finally: “Sandy Burglar used weasel words like ‘inadvertent’ and ‘accidentally discard’ to wish away criminal acts that jeopardize national security and which were likely done to protect the Clinton administration from facing the tribunal of history and to save Kerry’s presidential campaign, which Berger served as an advisor.
“Berger would have disgraced himself and his comrades less had he simply refused to comment.” So this one got swept under the rug and Berger’s buddies are coming out, “Oh, he’s such a great guy! He’s a little disheveled,” and this sort of thing. This is serious, and the Clinton administration, don’t forget, has the documents. They’ve got all the memos in his presidential library. They have all of the originals; they’ve got the drafts that went into making the final memo. The Landmark Legal Foundation has asked through Freedom of Information Act requests and the Government Papers Act or whatever for release, and the Clinton library has not released them and they don’t have to. Presidents can hold onto these things for 12 years if they are quote classified and relate to, quote, national security which is a cover for letting the government do much of anything and former presidents keep much of anything private.
My only theory on this is that if Clinton had such a great record on terrorism and fighting it and spending so much time on it, then that document would prove it, and he would want it out, and you combine this — and he doesn’t want it out because obviously it doesn’t indicate that they spent much time or care on this at all, the subject of terrorism. The second thing is, if you just remember their reaction to the movie The Path to 9/11 (laughing) they didn’t want that movie airing, because the movie depicts this incident in Seattle with the Customs agent as it accurately, actually happened. It doesn’t give credit to the Clinton administration. In fact, the whole period of time that the nineties covered by the movie Path to 9/11 makes it clear that the Clinton administration was not nearly as focused on it as they wanted everybody to believe and as they would like for everybody to be able to be made to believe today as they’re trying to construct the legacy.
As I say, Berger admitted to it. He got a misdemeanor and a $50,000 fine. His security clearance has been revoked, but he’ll get it back just in time to serve in Hillary Clinton’s administration if she wins and if she so wants him to be a member of her staff somewhere. He’ll get his security clearance back about the same time, sometime in 2009, maybe late 2008, I’m not sure about the exact date. This is something she needs to be asked about throughout the campaign, and you know it’s not going to happen. In a different world if she were a Republican and the exact scenario… The Democrats are going to spend all their time, as much as they can investigating Bush the next two years once they get into office. Scooter Libby is on trial for his freedom for a process crime that is just irresponsible and incompetent and Nifong-like if you ask me — and, meanwhile, Sandy Burglar walks free with constant praise about what a great patriot he is and what a great guy, just a little bit disorganized and disheveled.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
I’ve got a couple sound bites I want you to hear. This was last night on CNN, The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. The guests are The Forehead, Paul Begala, Democrat strategerist and member of the Clinton war room and Republican strategerist Bay Buchanan. They have this discussion about Sandy Burglar.
BUCHANAN: The key here, I think, is what this exposes is a man in the Clinton administration, the top fellow in national security, was deliberate in his effort to make sure certain documents were destroyed that would have obviously been incriminating to Clinton.
BEGALA: Not incriminating.
BUCHANAN: You think that this man went in there and stole documents and destroyed them, that would make him look good or make Bill Clinton look good?
BEGALA: No, no.
BUCHANAH: Alright.
BEGALA: I’m sure — I’m sure it cast him, and his boss — and my former boss, in a bad light.
BUCHANAN: Absolutely.
BEGALA: But that’s different from saying it was evidence of criminality.
RUSH: Of course, well, there’s no evidence of criminality — on whose part, Paul? Burglar, who confessed when it was all a misdemeanor?