Why Bush Justice Rolled Over For Sandy Berger

Jack Cashill - Why Bush Justice Rolled Over For Sandy Berger http://www.cashill.com/twa800/why_bush_rolled.
htm
Home | Professional | Personal | International | National | Regional | Books & DVDs |

Articles By Title | Email Jack
Part 1
Part 2
Part 2: Why Bush Justice
Part 3 Rolled Over For Sandy
Berger
© Jack Cashill
January 25, 2007 - WorldNetDaily.com
Intellectual Fraud
This is the second in a three-part
Intelligent Design
series on Samuel “Sandy” Berger.
Mega Fix Before proceeding, it would be helpful
to read the previous column, “The
Movie Reviews Secret That Sandy Risked His All For.”
Next: “How Berger Paid The GOP
Ron Brown Back.”
Terrorism
On March 18, 2005 Judge George Greer
TWA Flight 800 ordered that Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube be
Church removed. When Greer did so, he helped
General
set in motion a series of events that he
could never have anticipated.
Despite the extraordinary a'ention,

Schiavo’s was not the most closely watched
death in the early spring of 2005. Half a
world away, John Paul II was also dying, he
of natural causes.
A-er thirteen agonizing days, Schiavo died

on the morning of March 31. On that
a-ernoon, in a dusty pit stop of a Kansas
town called Herington, the FBI entered an
abandoned home, searched it, then
promptly called in the Topeka bomb squad
and evacuated the neighborhood.
Although these events were not at all
related, the timing almost assuredly was.
Speaking of timing, the next morning,

Friday, April 1, the Department of Justice
allowed former Clinton National Security
Advisor, Sandy Berger, to plead guilty to a
single misdemeanor charge for the
PDF Created with deskPDF PDF Writer - Trial :: http://www.docudesk.com

1 of 13 6/4/2009 10:33 PM
Jack Cashill - Why Bush Justice Rolled Over For Sandy Berger http://www.cashill.com/twa800/why_bush_rolled.htm
unauthorized removal and retention of

classified documents.
The memorable and useful Clinton-era

phrase for these maneuvers is “news
dump.” On the day a-er the Berger
Pleading, as anticipated, Pope John Paul II
died. The DOJ could not have chosen a
more opportune time to bury these two
stories.
On the surface, the dumping of these

stories by a Republican administration
made li'le sense. Both had the potential to
embarrass the Democrats, the Berger story
in a significant way.
The House Commi'ee on Government

Oversight and Reform would aptly call
Berger’s behavior “a disturbing breach of
trust and protocol that compromised the
nation’s national security.” If he had
chosen to, the Republican A'orney
General could have put the Democrat
Berger on trial and likely in prison.
As to the house in Kansas, that had been

the home of Oklahoma City bomber Terry
Nichols. Despite the FBI’s allegedly
exhaustive investigation, the explosives
had been si'ing there for the past ten
years, still another embarrassing oversight
in a case plagued by missteps on President
Clinton’s watch.
As I watched these events unfold two

years ago, I presumed that the Bush DOJ
chose not to exploit these stories for
reasons of national security. Although
seemingly unrelated, both of these stories
lead to the same larger secret, a secret that
Berger risked his career to conceal, a secret
that if revealed had the potential to
destabilize the nation during a time of war.
As I have since learned, however, the Bush

2 of 13 6/4/2009 10:33 PM
White House is not fully in control of its

own Justice Department and FBI. In truth,
the decision to protect Berger may have
more to do with saving the Clinton legacy
than with stabilizing the nation.
In last week’s column, I noted that

President Clinton had reviewed a
document on the Bojinka plot that directly
referenced plans to use airplanes as flying
bombs, and he did so in the wake of the
July 1996 destruction of TWA Flight 800,
five years before 9/11. More damning, he
le- his own notes on these documents.
Berger’s task was likely to make sure all

references to the Bojinka plot and/or TWA
Flight 800 were purged from the Archives,
especially any documents with
hand-wri'en notes that led back to himself,
Clinton, and the architect of the TWA 800
“exit strategy,” anti-terror honcho, Richard
Clarke.
Curiously, the explosives cache found in

Kansas leads to exactly the same secrets. In
the way of background, the FBI first
learned of a possible terrorist plot to mark
the tenth anniversary of the Oklahoma City
bombing on March 1, 2005. Stephen
Dresch, a forensic economist, and his
intrepid colleague, Angela Clemente, had
informed the FBI by FAX and phone on
that date. On March 3, Dresch informed
me of the same.
By March 11, Dresch had identified the

house where the explosives were stored
and the ultimate source of the tip,
Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols. The
man who had pointed Dresch and
Clemente to the explosives was none other
than Gregory Scarpa, Jr., a fellow inmate of
Nichols in their Colorado prison.
For at least three weeks, the FBI knew the

3 of 13 6/4/2009 10:33 PM
location of the house and did nothing.

Even a-er the tip proved accurate, the
Bureau has refused to acknowledge that it
was Scarpa who led them to Herington.
A-er all, if it were Scarpa, how to explain
the potentially lethal delay?
Two weeks ago, a-er completing his

investigation of the Oklahoma City
bombing, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher
ended the mystery. In a thank you note to
Clemente, Rohrabacher casually affirmed,
“It was you and Dr. Dresch, acting on a tip
from Gregory Scarpa, Jr., who learned that
the FBI missed a stash of explosives.” He
added, “You have a real knack for
investigation.”
Scarpa has a history of informing. In the

summer of 1996, while awaiting trial on
RICO charges in a New York City jail, he
collaborated with the FBI on an elaborate
sting to evoke information from his then
prison mate, Ramzi Yousef. Yousef was the
mastermind of the first World Trade Center
bombing and the designer of Bojinka, a plot
to blow up planes and/or use planes as
bombs, for which he was then on trial.
Through no fault of Scarpa’s, the sting

backfired. Using the outside line that
Scarpa and the FBI had set up, Yousef
communicated in his native Baluchi to his
fellow conspirators, 9-11 mastermind,
Khalid Sheik Mohammed among them. The
FBI could not readily translate.
On July 17, 1996, TWA Flight 800 was

destroyed off the coast of Long island. On
the FBI line, Yousef claimed credit for the
destruction of the aircra-. Whether or not
he was telling the truth remains uncertain.
What is undeniable, however, is that on
July 18 Yousef asked for a mistrial, citing
the newly hostile environment for airplane
bombers like himself.

4 of 13 6/4/2009 10:33 PM
Embarrassed, the Clinton Justice

Department came down hard on Scarpa.
US A'orney Valerie Caproni, who oversaw
the sting, prosecuted Scarpa and buried
him for a hard 40 at the Florence, Colorado
Super Max. This was an unusually stiff
penalty for a non-lethal RICO conviction,
especially for a guy who had risked his life
to collaborate with the FBI. (For a complete
account of the Scarpa story, I would
recommend Peter Lance’s recent book,
Triple Cross.)
Caproni, by the way, is the same U.S.

A'orney who illegally seized the authority
for investigating TWA Flight 800 away from
the NTSB and gave it to the FBI. This same
multi-tasking Caproni oversaw the
prosecution of reporter James Sanders and
his wife Elizabeth for Sanders’ efforts to
investigate Caproni and her patently illegal
maneuver.
Today, Valerie Caproni is the General

Counsel of the FBI, the Bureau’s top legal
position. And this brings us to what may
well be the primary reason for the failure of
the Bush Justice Department to pursue the
Berger case as it should have.
The FBI and the Department of Justice,

which oversees the FBI, are riddled with
Clinton-era holdovers, many of them in key
positions. I am sure that many of the
careerists at Justice and the FBI do their job
in good faith. But as the House Commi'ee
report on Sandy Berger makes clear, not all
of them.
If the House report has a hero, it is the

Inspector General of the National
Archives, Paul Brachfeld. Brachfeld began
his work for the federal government in the
Carter administration and is testament to
the potential for integrity in a career

5 of 13 6/4/2009 10:33 PM
bureaucrat.
Beginning with the third of Berger’s four

visits to the Archives in September 2003,
when Berger was first caught in the act of
stealing documents, Brachfeld tried to alert
the Justice Department to the scope and
seriousness of the the-.
On January 14, 2004, the day Berger first

testified before the 9/11 Commission,
Brachfeld met with DOJ trial a'orney
Howard Sklamberg. Concerned that Berger
had obstructed the Commission’s work,
Brachfeld wanted assurance that the
Commission knew of Berger’s crime and
the potential ramifications of it.
On March 22, two days before Berger’s

public testimony, senior a'orneys John
Dion and Bruce Swartz got back to
Brachfeld. They informed him that the DOJ
was not going to notify the 9/11
Commission of the Berger investigation
before his appearance. “Justice
Department’s first obligation,” Dion told
Brachfeld, “was to conduct its criminal
investigation in the proper way.”
Given his experiece with the DOJ,

Brachfeld was not quite sure what
“proper” meant. Despite his fear of
crossing Dion—in his estimate a “powerful
and influential Justice Department
official”--Brachfeld pressed for assurance.
On March 26, Brachfeld called DOJ

a'orney Thomas Reilly, who was
investigating Berger, and asked for a
response. Ge'ing no satisfaction, he called
DOJ’s Inspector General Glenn Fine on
April 6 and again expressed his concern
that the 9/11 Commission remained
unaware of Berger’s actions.
Fine organized a meeting for April 9. As

6 of 13 6/4/2009 10:33 PM
Brachfeld reported to those gathered,

“Berger knowingly removed documents
and therefore, may have purposely
impeded the 9/11 investigation.” Some of
those documents, Brachfeld added, might
have been “original.”
The House report singles out Bruce Swartz,

Dion’s boss, as the one a'orney most
adamantly protective of Berger. Swartz
refused to admit that Berger could have
stolen documents in his first two visits
despite Brachfeld’s insistence that he had
the means and the motive.
Throughout April and May of 2004,

Brachfeld continued to pester DOJ to
follow up with its commitment to notify the
9/11 Commission. On May 26, Brachfeld
learned through Glenn Fine that “relevant
information” about Berger had been
passed to the 9/11 Commission, but
Brachfeld had no more confidence in
Justice’s idea of “relevant information”
than he had in its idea of a “proper”
investigation.
Not until July 19, 2004, did word leak to the

press of the Berger investigation. This was
just three days before the 9/11 Commission
released its final report, too late for any
significant amendment.
At the time, of course, the Democrats

blamed the Republicans for the leak. ʺI find
it rather curious,” said a spokesman for
then candidate John Kerry, “that the
President has chosen the very week before
the Democratic Convention to deny his
deep involvement in a potentially criminal
effort to smear an anonymous private
citizen.ʺ
The “private citizen” in question, of course,

was Sandy Berger, then a national security
advisor to the Kerry campaign. The

7 of 13 6/4/2009 10:33 PM
Democrat blogs called the alleged

Republican scandal “Timingate,” as in
“Desperate Bush Denies Link to Growing
‘Timingate” Scandal,” an absurdity that the
media more or less echoed.
In the real world, however, the timing

allowed the Democrats to keep the story
away from the 9-11 Commission, lose it in
the larger coverage of the Democrat
convention, distance Kerry from Berger
before the campaign got rolling, and finally
blame Bush for denying his alleged
involvement.
Brachfeld ignored the election and pressed

the DOJ for more information into the fall
of 2004. At a November 5 meeting, Dion
and Swartz conceded that they had not
informed the 9/11 Commission of Berger’s
access to original files. Noel Hillman, a
Republican appointee and chief of DOJ’s
Public Integrity section, was visibly upset
with Swartz. This was likely the first he
knew of his colleagues’obstruction.
At a November 23 follow-up meeting with

all the relevant DOJ a'orneys, Brachfeld
asked if Justice would go back and examine
the question of why the 9/11 Commission
had been le- in the dark. Reilly blew him
off, and Swartz loudly expressed his
indignation that Brachfeld would question
his integrity.
In a private meeting soon a-erwards,

Brachfeld persuaded Hillman of the
potential seriousness of Berger’s the-.
Hillman publicly instructed the FBI to go
back and review Berger’s first two visits. Its
agents never did.
On February 3, 2005 White House Counsel

Alberto Gonzalez assumed control of the
Justice Department from retiring A'orney
General John Ashcro-. According to

8 of 13 6/4/2009 10:33 PM
insiders, this was nearly as disruptive as a

change in administration.
On April 1, 2005--18 months into an

investigation that could just as well have
been done in a week--the DOJ issued a
press release outlining the Berger case.
“Berger concealed and removed a total of
five copies of classified documents from
the Archives,” read the release. “The
documents were different versions of a
single document.”
The press release continued, “Each of the

five copies of the document was produced
to the 9-11 Commission in due course.”
Credit was given to Reilly, Dion,
Sklamberg, and Hillman for their fine work.
The DOJ recommended a $10,000 fine and

a three-year loss of security clearance for
Berger, which would get him back in the
ball game in time for a potential Clinton
resurrection in 2008. To put this in
perspective, the NFL fined a Pi'sburgh
Steelers linebacker $10,000 last month for a
derogatory comment he made about a
Cleveland Browns tight end.
The DOJ press conference floored

Brachfeld. He was shocked at Hillman’s
claim that the “investigation found no
evidence of Berger trying to hide anything
from the 9/11 commission” or that “the
Commission had access to all documents it
requested.” He knew both claims to be
conspicuously false.
The House Commi'ee report verified the

same. The FBI never did go back and
review Berger’s first two visits when he had
access to large volume of original
documents, most notably “the original,
uncopied Staff Member Office Files of
Richard Clarke and original, uncopied,
unique NSC documents.”

9 of 13 6/4/2009 10:33 PM
Dion and Swartz, when interviewed by the

House Commi'ee, offered li'le but
excuses in the way of explanation. As the
House report concluded, “The lack of
interest in Berger’s first two visits is
disturbing.” The pair also declined to
submit Berger to a polygraph exam as
required by his Plea Agreement.
If these two a'orneys and their colleagues

were “unacceptably incurious” across the
board, one could write off their sloth to
bureaucratic malaise. But at the same time
Dion and Swartz were cosseting Sandy
Berger, they were eagerly campaigning to
out the rascal who blew CIA agent Valerie
Plame’s imagined cover.
Before Patrick Fitzgerald was appointed

special prosecutor, Dion headed the
investigation. On October 9, 2003, Dion
was the subject of a fla'ering profile by the
Associated Press, the kind of stroking that
only friends get in the incestuously liberal
world of Washington media.
“Those who have worked with Dion say he

will not shy away from advocating charges
against any high-level Bush administration
official if thatʹs where the investigation
leads,” read the hopeful AP piece. Among
the colleagues quoted was Dion’s
immediate supervisor, Bruce Swartz. Even
a-er Fitzgerald took over, Dion and Swartz
stayed on the Plamegate team, Swartz
reportedly as second-in-command.
Swartz, Sklamberg, Fine and Dion were all

held over from the Clinton administration.
Although neither Dion nor Reilly has an
obvious record of federal contributions,
Sklamberg, Fine and Swartz have only
contributed to Democrat candidates in
federal races. Fine, who was appointed
DOJ Inspector General in the waning days

10 of 13 6/4/2009 10:33 PM
of the Clinton administration, contributed

to the DNC and the Clinton campaign in
1992.
Although appointed FBI General Counsel

in August 2003 under the Bush
administration, Valerie Caproni contributed
to the John Edwards 2004 presidential
campaign, her only listed contribution.
A-er Al Gore’s bi'er loss in 2000,

Democrats across the board have indulged
in a six-year long orgy of spite and
bureaucratic sedition unprecedented in
recent American history. During that time,
they have had the easy ear of an equally
embi'ered and increasingly imbalanced
media.
One need only compare the coverage of

the apocryphal crime in the Plame affair
and Berger’s real and highly consequential
crime to see how far out of control the
major media have spun in recent years.
Indeed, in the two weeks a-er the release
of the House Commi'ee report on Berger
not a single major newspaper covered it in
sufficient depth to mention Paul Brachfeld
by name.
Although Noel Hillman has no known

record of federal contributions, he is a
Republican appointee. Now a Federal
District Judge in New Jersey, he is
expected to be appointed to an opening on
the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals,
Supreme Court, Justice Samuel Alito’s old
seat. New Jersey’s two Democrat senators
supported his bid for the judgeship last
year and will likely support him again.
The Newark Star Ledger reported that Bush

decided against choosing an “ideological
conservative”—Hillman is presumably
something other--fearing defeat at the
hands of a Democrat Senate.

11 of 13 6/4/2009 10:33 PM
If Hillman is nominated, this might be an

opportune time for the Republicans in the
Senate to get to the meat of the Berger
affair. They just might want to ask how it is
that Sandy Berger is a free man and
Scooter Libby is on trial. Did Hillman yield
to intimidation from below or “national
security” warnings from above.
Or was it a li'le bit of both?
Next : “How Berger Paid Back the GOP”
Part 1 : The Secret that Sandy Risked his All For

Part 2 : Why Bush Justice Rolled Over for Sandy
Berger
Part 3 : How Sandy Berger Paid Back the GOP
Previous part (1) Next part (3)
Special Note:
Jack Cashill and James Sanders' First Strike:

TWA Flight 800 and the Attack on America
is now available. First Strike explains how a
determined corps of ordinary citizens worked
to reveal the compromise and corruption that
tainted the federal investigation. With an
impressive array of facts, Jack Cashill and
James Sanders show the relationship between
events in July 1996 and September 2001 and
proclaim how and why the American
government has attempted to cover up the
truth.
Subscribe to Jack's mailing list.

It's FREE!
Receive political news, invitations to

12 of 13 6/4/2009 10:33 PM
political events and special offers.
Home | Professional | Personal | International | National | Regional | Books & DVDs |

Articles By Title | Email Jack

13 of 13 6/4/2009 10:33 PM

Why Bush Justice Rolled Over For Sandy Berger

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Why Bush Justice Rolled Over For Sandy Berger

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Jack Cashill - Why Bush Justice Rolled Over For Sandy Berger http://www.cashill.com/twa800/why_bush_rolled.

Home | Professional | Personal | International | National | Regional | Books & DVDs |

Despite the extraordinary a'ention,

A-er thirteen agonizing days, Schiavo died

Speaking of timing, the next morning,

PDF Created with deskPDF PDF Writer - Trial :: http://www.docudesk.com

unauthorized removal and retention of

The memorable and useful Clinton-era

On the surface, the dumping of these

The House Commi'ee on Government

As to the house in Kansas, that had been

As I watched these events unfold two

As I have since learned, however, the Bush

PDF Created with deskPDF PDF Writer - Trial :: http://www.docudesk.com

White House is not fully in control of its

In last week’s column, I noted that

Berger’s task was likely to make sure all

Curiously, the explosives cache found in

By March 11, Dresch had identiﬁed the

For at least three weeks, the FBI knew the

PDF Created with deskPDF PDF Writer - Trial :: http://www.docudesk.com

location of the house and did nothing.

Two weeks ago, a-er completing his

Scarpa has a history of informing. In the

Through no fault of Scarpa’s, the sting

On July 17, 1996, TWA Flight 800 was

PDF Created with deskPDF PDF Writer - Trial :: http://www.docudesk.com

Embarrassed, the Clinton Justice

Caproni, by the way, is the same U.S.

Today, Valerie Caproni is the General

The FBI and the Department of Justice,

If the House report has a hero, it is the

PDF Created with deskPDF PDF Writer - Trial :: http://www.docudesk.com

Beginning with the third of Berger’s four

On January 14, 2004, the day Berger ﬁrst

On March 22, two days before Berger’s

Given his experiece with the DOJ,

On March 26, Brachfeld called DOJ

Fine organized a meeting for April 9. As

PDF Created with deskPDF PDF Writer - Trial :: http://www.docudesk.com

Brachfeld reported to those gathered,

The House report singles out Bruce Swartz,

Throughout April and May of 2004,

Not until July 19, 2004, did word leak to the

At the time, of course, the Democrats

The “private citizen” in question, of course,

PDF Created with deskPDF PDF Writer - Trial :: http://www.docudesk.com

Democrat blogs called the alleged

In the real world, however, the timing

Brachfeld ignored the election and pressed

At a November 23 follow-up meeting with

In a private meeting soon a-erwards,

On February 3, 2005 White House Counsel

PDF Created with deskPDF PDF Writer - Trial :: http://www.docudesk.com

insiders, this was nearly as disruptive as a

On April 1, 2005--18 months into an

The press release continued, “Each of the

The DOJ recommended a $10,000 ﬁne and

The DOJ press conference ﬂoored

The House Commi'ee report veriﬁed the

PDF Created with deskPDF PDF Writer - Trial :: http://www.docudesk.com

Dion and Swartz, when interviewed by the