by Jack Cashill
“I’m not going to talk about my clients,” he told the Times, as if he could have provided any useful service to anyone other than his continued silence. The president claimed to have learned about the payoff only by reading about it in the newspapers. “The charge is serious; we need to get to the bottom of it,”17 said Clinton with enough of a straight face to keep the Times from branding this scandal a “scandal” and running with it the way its editors would have had Clinton been a Republican.
As Hubbell’s case suggested, a fixer’s obligation to the Clintons did not end when he or she left their employ. In January 2004, the Times reported matter-of-factly that Jamie Gorelick was resigning from Fannie Mae “to spend more time on the national commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and to pursue other interests.”18 What the Times did not report is that during her five-plus years with that self-serving enterprise, Gorelick self-served herself to the queenly sum of $26,466,834 in salary, bonuses, performance pay, and stock options.19
Gorelick was either the most self-sacrificing of American patriots or an anxious fixer with a mess to clean up. As one of only five Democrats on that commission and the only one to give up a $5-million-a-year gig to secure a seat, the latter option seems most likely. Gorelick hinted at what that mess might be when she told the Times that the commission’s work focused “on the period of 1998 forward.”20 She said this to deflect criticism that she would be investigating her own responsibility for the 9/11 attacks, but her timing suggested a deeper truth.
If the Clintons asked Gorelick to give up her extravagant Fannie Mae salary, they asked even more of their ultimate fixer, Sandy Berger. Like Pulp Fiction’s Winston Wolf, Berger’s job was to “solve problems.” Berger and the president went way back. They worked together on the McGovern campaign in 1972, and twenty years later Berger urged Clinton to run for president when others friends shied away. In his first term, Clinton rewarded this trade lawyer and lobbyist with the deputy national security advisor job, not because of Berger’s foreign policy experience, which was slight, but because of his political instincts, which were keen.
In his second term, Clinton appointed Berger national security advisor. Unlike virtually all of his predecessors—General Colin Powell, Rear Admiral John Poindexter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger—Berger had no serious foreign policy expertise. What he did have was the president’s confidence. Clinton had entrusted the then deputy with some highly sensitive assignments, and Berger delivered. That Berger reportedly remained in the family quarters with the Clintons during the first night of the TWA 800 saga testified to the trust between the two men. So too did his designation as Clinton’s point man on China. On the controversial trade missions abroad, it was Berger who pulled the strings that made Ron Brown dance.
In April 2002, the former president called in his chits. He designated Berger as his representative to review intelligence documents in advance of the various hearings on 9/11. As a 2007 report by the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform specified, Berger did not ask for this assignment, not at all.21 According to the archivists, Berger “indicated some disgust with the burden and responsibility of conducting the document review.” The Clintons, however, had a hold on Berger. To appease them, he risked everything—his reputation, his livelihood, his very freedom. According to the House report, Berger made four trips to the National Archives. His stated reason for the visits was to prepare for his upcoming testimony before the Graham-Goss congressional committee and the 9/11 Commission. The first of his visits was in May 2002, the last in October 2003. He clearly left his mark. “The full extent of Berger’s document removal,” said the House report, “is not known and never can be known.”
In the absence of substantive reporting by the major media, please allow me an informed speculation as to why Berger risked his all. On his first visit, according to Archives staff, “Berger was especially interested in White House terrorism advisor Richard Clarke’s personal office files.”22 According to the Committee, “Had Berger seen ‘a smoking gun’ or other documents he did not want brought to an investigatory panel’s attention, he could have removed it on this visit.” If there were a “smoking gun,” it might well have involved the idea of using planes as bombs.
Understandably, the 9/11 Commission was concerned about who knew what when in regards to the use of planes as bombs. Before the Atlanta Olympics, in fact, Clarke had warned security planners about the possibility of someone like Ramzi Yousef hijacking a 747 and flying it into Olympic Stadium.23 Two days before the start of those Olympics, on July 17, Saddam’s National Liberation Day, with the U.S. Navy on an extremely high state of alert, TWA Flight 800 blew up inexplicably off the coast of Long Island. The fact that the president was reviewing Bojinka plans soon after the destruction of TWA Flight 800 made the versions of those plans with his hand written notes on them all the more critical. If found and revealed, those plans, at the very least, would have shown the president’s interest in the possible use of planes as bombs five years before September 11.
Berger’s task, I believe, was to make sure all references to Bojinka, planes-as-bombs, and/or TWA Flight 800 were rooted from the Archives, especially any documents with hand-written notes that led back to co-conspirators Berger, Clarke, Tenet, Gorelick, or Clinton. For what other reason would Berger have risked so much?
Paul Brachfeld, the inspector general of the National Archives, threw a major wrench into the Clintons’ scheme. Unlike so many career bureaucrats, Brachfeld spoke out forcefully about the criminal activity he was witnessing, namely Berger’s theft and destruction of sensitive government documents. Unfortunately, he met resistance from other career bureaucrats less committed to the national interest than he was. On January 14, 2004, the day Berger first testified privately before the 9/11 Commission, Brachfeld met with DOJ attorney Howard Sklamberg. Concerned that Berger had obstructed the 9/11 Commission’s work, Brachfeld wanted assurance that the commission knew of Berger’s crime and the potential ramifications of it. He did not get it. On March 22, 2004, two days before Berger’s public testimony, senior attorneys John Dion and Bruce Swartz informed Brachfeld the DOJ was not going to notify the commission of the Berger investigation before his appearance.
DOJ’s failure to notify the commission set up one of the most bizarre days in the annals of American history—Wednesday, March 24, 2004. Testifying together before the commission were George Tenet, Richard Clarke, and Sandy Berger.24 Evaluating their testimony was Jamie Gorelick, one of only ten commissioners. Berger had already been apprehended stealing and destroying documents that the commission was expected to review. The commission members, at least the Republicans, did not know this. This much was evident in Chairman Thomas Kean’s initial exchange with Berger.
“We are pleased to welcome before the commission a witness who can offer us considerable insight into questions of national policy coordination, Mr. Samuel Berger, who served as President Clinton’s national security advisor,” said Kean. To those in the know what Kean asked next must have sounded like a punch line: “Mr. Berger, we would like to ask you to raise your right hand. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?” Even more perversely amusing were Gorelick’s final words to Berger, “Thank you very much for your testimony and your service to the country.”
The Republicans on the commission questioned Berger and Clarke about President Clinton’s inaction after the bombing of the USS Cole and other terrorist attacks. In a dazzling display of political moxie, both men cited the false TWA 800 narrative to make their inaction seem virtuous. “We thought TWA 800 was terrorism,” said Berger. “It was not terrorism. People actually—dozens of people saw the missile strike TWA 800 as it went up over Long Island.” At this point, Commissioner John Lehman interjected, “Yes, but you just told us. . . .” Berger snapped back, “Preliminary judgments, I have come to learn, are not the same as judgments.”
Clarke elaborated on this theme in his defe
nse of Berger. “He pointed out that in the days and weeks after the TWA 800 crash, we assumed it was a terrorist attack,” said Clarke confidently. “There were eyewitnesses of what appeared to be a missile attack. But after exhaustive investigations that went on for years, in the case of the NTSB and the FBI, a determination was made that it was not a terrorist attack.” With Berger having purged the files and with Gorelick monitoring the commission, Clarke had every reason to feel confident.
Clarke came to the hearing well prepped. In this critical election year, several major media partisans had collaborated to turn this hitherto obscure bureaucrat into a celebrity swift boater. His soon-to-be-bestseller Against All Enemies had been published two days prior. He appeared on 60 Minutes the Sunday before the hearing and on Meet the Press the following Sunday. At every turn, he played the selfless public servant who, unlike President Bush, was man enough to apologize for failing to prevent 9/11. In testifying before Gorelick and her fellow commissioners, Clarke asked that intelligence analysts “be forgiven for not thinking about [aviation terror] given the fact that they hadn’t seen a lot in the five or six years intervening about it.”
Of course, to think about aviation terror would have kept TWA 800 in the conversation. As the memoirs of the various participants suggest, no one wanted it there. Although Clarke talked about the crash in 2004, he helped kill the investigation in 1996. Berger and Gorelick signed on to make sure it stayed dead. Unfortunately, the Clintons and their cronies did so good a job burying the truth that no one passed information about potential aviation terror on to the next administration. This became apparent with the very first question posed to Bush national security advisor Condoleezza Rice in her appearance before the commission on April 8, 2004.25 Asked Kean, “Did you ever see or hear from the FBI, from the CIA, from any other intelligence agency, any memos or discussions or anything else between the time you got into office and 9-11 that talked about using planes as bombs?” Rice had not.
Tenet avoided the subject of TWA 800 at the hearing, but he caused problems for Gorelick on another front. In explaining intelligence failures before 9/11, he first addressed the “wall that was in place between the criminal side and the intelligence side.” Tenet made that barrier sound impenetrable. “What’s in a criminal case doesn’t cross over that line. Ironclad regulations,” he insisted. “So that even people in the Criminal Division and the Intelligence Divisions of the FBI couldn’t talk to each other, let alone talk to us or us talk to them.”
This testimony flummoxed those of us researching TWA 800. Kallstrom and his colleagues certainly used the “wall” to protect the FBI’s criminal investigation from the NTSB, but they welcomed, or at least accepted, the involvement of the CIA from day one on. In the ensuing months, they fed the CIA analysts a steady stream of information about a presumed crime against American citizens on American territory. This cooperation, in which Tenet himself was involved, showed the wall to be more vulnerable to presidential politics than to any pressing issue of national security.
In her response to Tenet, Gorelick acknowledged the wall and claimed to have used “brute force” in her attempt to penetrate it, but she took no responsibility for its creation. The task of assigning credit was left to Attorney General John Ashcroft. In fact, he was the first witness to call attention to the inherent conflict in Gorelick’s double agency. “The single greatest structural cause for Sept. 11 was the wall,” Ashcroft testified before the commission on April 13, 2004.26 He was referring here to the same memo that Tenet had, one issued in 1995, which provided instructions on the “separation of certain foreign counterintelligence and criminal investigations.”27 These instructions, as Tenet noted, disallowed FBI agents from communicating with intelligence gatherers at the CIA and elsewhere. “Full disclosure,” Ashcroft continued, “compels me to inform you that its author is a member of the commission.”
That author, of course, was Gorelick. “We predicted Democrats would use the 9/11 Commission for partisan purposes, and that much of the press would oblige,” thundered a Wall Street Journal editorial. “But color us astonished that barely anyone appreciates the significance of the bombshell Attorney General John Ashcroft dropped on the hearings Tuesday.”28 For all their passion, the Journal editors themselves failed to see the significance of the Ashcroft revelation. The Clintons and their allies had handed an inexperienced functionary a $5 million a year job. She then gave that job up to join the 9/11 Commission despite a work history that, when exposed, would embarrass the Democrats. Having kicked TWA 800 down Clinton’s ample memory hole, the Journal and all other media overlooked one outstanding fact: under Gorelick’s watchful gaze the CIA and FBI collaborated splendidly on the zoom climb video. In so doing, they proved there was nothing “ironclad” about those regulations. By 2004, this collaboration was a matter of record.
While the commission hearing moved on, its best story lines suppressed or ignored, the National Archives’ Brachfeld kept prodding Justice. On April 6, 2004, two weeks after Berger’s appearance before the 9/11 Commission, he called DOJ’s Inspector General Glenn Fine and again expressed his concern that the commissioners remained unaware of Berger’s theft. Fine organized a meeting for April 9. 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.”
For all of his efforts, Brachfeld was unable to persuade Justice to inform the 9/11 Commission of Berger’s actions. The commissioners remained in the dark until July 19, 2004, three days before the 9/11 Commission released its final report, too late for any significant amendment. They might not have known even then had there not been a leak from somewhere in the Bush administration. At the time this story broke in July 2004, Berger was serving as a campaign advisor to Senator John Kerry. “Last year, when I was in the archives reviewing documents, I made an honest mistake,” he told reporters.29 His attorney Lanny Breuer called the removal of these documents an “accident” and shifted the blame to the Bush White House for using the revelation as a campaign ploy. A year later, when Berger pled guilty, the Times wrote off the theft and the surrounding hoopla as “a brief stir” in the campaign season.30
In truth, there was nothing honest or accidental about what Berger had done. Among his more flagrantly criminal acts, Berger swiped some highly classified documents, and then, during a break, stashed them under a trailer at a construction site. He retrieved them at the end of the day and admittedly used scissors to cut the documents into little pieces before throwing them away. These repeated thefts should have caused a whole lot more than a brief stir. “His motives in taking the documents remain something of a mystery,” reported the Times after Berger pled guilty.31 How different history would have been had the Washington Post contented itself with writing, “The motives of the Watergate burglars remain something of a mystery.”
Finally, on Friday, April 1, 2005, the Bush Department of Justice announced its plea deal with Berger, an embarrassingly lenient one at that—a $10,000 fine and the loss of his top-level security clearance for three years.32 That was it. Berger repeatedly stole and destroyed classified documents, lied about it to authorities, and received a much lighter punishment than James Sanders had for receiving and testing a purloined pinch of foam rubber. In September 2005, a federal judge upped the ante on Berger’s treachery but not by enough to hurt. Judge Deborah Robinson raised the fine to $50,000—chump change for the wealthy attorney—added two years of probation, and threw in one hundred hours of community service. Robinson said she took into account Berger’s “otherwise exemplary record” and “sincere expression of remorse” in her sentence. Berger was remorseful only about getting caught. “I let considerations of personal convenience override clear rules of handling classified material,” he lied on the very day of his sentencing. There was nothing convenient about shredding documents and nothing exemplary about the reasons he had to do so.33
As I watched these events unfold, I presumed the Bush DOJ went soft on Berger to honor some unwritten pact among presidents to protect their predecessors’ national security secrets. On closer inspection, however, it seems that the Bush White House lacked control of its own Justice Department. For the record, Dion, Swartz, Sklamberg, and Fine were all holdovers from the Clinton administration. As far as I could tell, Fine, Swartz, and Sklamberg have only contributed to Democratic candidates in federal races and Dion has no record of federal contributions.34 During the course of the investigation, Alberto Gonzales, a Republican Janet Reno, replaced the much shrewder John Ashcroft as attorney general. For whatever reason, Gonzales consented to the absurdly lenient plea agreement offered to Berger. In the final analysis, the decision to protect Berger may have had more to do with saving the Clinton legacy than with protecting national interests.
Less than a year later, Berger was back in the news. The global strategy firm over which he presided, Stonebridge International, added a new member to its advisory board. That member just happened to be the vice-chair of the 9/11 Commission, Lee Hamilton, a former congressman. The chutzpah of this appointment still astonishes. Berger had thoroughly sabotaged the work of the 9/11 Commission and then had the nerve to appoint the highest-ranking Democrat on that commission to the five-member advisory board of his private firm. Again, the media chose not to notice. The media failed to notice as well when Berger helped plot the political assassination of the one man in Washington most willing to expose his and the Clintons’ criminal mischief, Rep. Curt Weldon, a ten-term Republican from Pennsylvania. In the process, the unrepentant Berger would help turn Congress over to the Democrats.