Berger Bust

Bravo Romeo Delta

Since everyone else is doing it, I'll shoot forth my two cents worth on the Berger Bust. For those of you who are getting up to speed, I'd recommend Vodkapundit ( here, here, here, here, here, here) for a fairly critical view of things. Roger Simon's comments offer "Jerry" who has a somewhat more moderate view of things, while Roger's other post on the matter rounds things out a bit. Finally, Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall engages in some down right foolishness in regards to the Berger kerfuffle, in trying to parse this one out of the painful spotlight. Among other things kids, copies of classified documents are still classified. It doesn't matter whether or not you were handing your sister's diary around your grade school or Xerox copies of it - your butt is still getting grounded.

Well kids, much like anyone else with some honesty might do, there's not a lot to be said until the all the evidence comes in (don't you wish they had done that with the Niger/WMD claims?).

That said, I think I have a pretty good bead on what's going on here: institutional culture. Just about every agency has radically different cultural views towards secret documents.

Anecdotal Evidence Approaching

For instance, in the State Department, people have to be reminded to do things like return copies of classified documents used in classroom exercises, or instructed about keeping two sets of class notes: those based on classified materials, and those based on unclassified materials. For these folks, classification means diplomatic embarrassment. By and large, they tend to view classified materials in much the same way as a lawyer might view confidential or privileged documents - don't leave it around so just anyone will find it - someone could get embarrassed.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have the military and even more so, the intelligence agencies, for whom leaks mean deaths. These people tend, in general, to be good about following procedure. For example, when Mark Bowden (author of Black Hawk Down) was invited to speak at a conference on his book, a separate unclassified conference room was rented for his presentation. Just before he began to speak, all the attendees shuffled in, and just after he finished answering questions, they all shuffled out, back to their classified briefings, with classified handouts, classified notes, and classified conversations. Folks in these cultures have grown used to the notion that anything classified that needs to be studied has do be done in a secure environment, and that violating procedure and taking either the materials themselves or notes based on the materials is a quick route to a long walk off a short plank. Secrecy isn’t a matter of protocol, it’s quite literally a matter of potential life or death.

Now, meanwhile, these State Department folk aren't nearly as rigorous about these items. So how does Sandy Berger fit into all this?

Well, take a look at his bio. You'll note that one of his first jobs out of Harvard Law School was as a lawyer for a Washington law firm doing international trade (hence the notion of confidential and privileged information). And yep, from there he got that whole fuzzy classified/confidential/privileged notion muddled further in his first government job in the State Department.

So yes, what he did is illegal, but he's not been in environments in which the 'sanctity' of classified materials was really either drilled in or reinforced.

From what's come out so far, he knew it was a no-no (otherwise, why the socks?), but he didn't regard it as a cardinal sin, but rather a venal one. How this plays in the press is yet to be seen, but you have to recall that Watergate and Lewinski were both venal sins, until the cover-ups made them mortal and cardinal sins respectively.

Launched by Bravo Romeo Delta at July 21, 2004 12:58 AM