Mae West, yesteryear’s buxom, blonde and brassy Hollywood actress, might have put her best, uhm features forward, saddled up to Sandy Berger, and asked slyly, “Is that a wad of secret classified documents in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?” In Mae West’s risqué movie containing this immortal inquiry, she thinks the gentleman’s pocket-bulge might be a gun. In Berger’s own surreal drama, the question’s whether his socks bulged.
Most people who stuff their socks with secret classified documents know exactly what they are doing. Of course Berger, former US National Security Adviser to former US President Bill Clinton, through his lawyer, denies stuffing his socks because his whole argument is he acted negligently, rather than intentionally. “I deeply regret the sloppiness involved,” he voiced passively.
Former Clinton administration colleagues claim that Berger is an absent-minded professor-type with a messy desk, and that unintentionally carrying secret classified documents away from the National Archives is “typical Sandy.”
Being a “slob” is not criminal.
But furtively stuffing your socks might be. But maybe Berger’s just a democrat in the best Rumsfeldian sense. Rumsfeld theorizes democracy is “messy” and impromptu. Democracy inspires folks to erupt with impulse and knock over statues, run wild in the streets, loot, pillage, and take things that don’t belong to them. And if your “portfolio” and pockets are already full, well, socks are handy. But unless your socks are really baggy and loose, it’s hard to imagine that secret classified documents would just fall into them. Without you noticing.
Especially if those documents concern Al-Qaeda, rather than your grocery list or a phone number kind of document. I mean, assuming you take your socks off to bathe or sleep, you’d at least notice the secret classified documents in them then. Unless of course, as soon as you took your socks off and the secret classified documents fell out, your dog came by and ate them.
Ask any high school teacher or college professor in the US. It is a national disgrace that our pet dogs are so ill-fed that they often gobble up piles of homework.
Secret classified documents probably look a lot like homework. And speaking of homework, Sandy Berger claims he was doing just that “taking work” home. He’d made over 50 pages of handwritten notes while perusing secret classified documents at the National Archives. The Archives’ rule is that these notes must be reviewed by archivists before you leave, to make sure you haven’t inadvertently copied down any information still secret and classified.
Because that would be pretty close to taking the original document out in the first place. And then it wouldn’t be secret and classified anymore. Berger admits he knew the rule, but took his notes home without the required review anyway. In Berger’s defense, some politicians entrusted with 9/11 secrets have set a very bad example for him. Less than a month after 9/11, Sen. John Edwards, of the elite Senate Intelligence Committee and now the Democrat vice presidential candidate, himself publicly averred that he’d received “the most classified top secret info” from the CIA, FBI, and all other US intelligence agencies.
“The briefings I have been in have been very extensive,” Edwards bragged. “I’m entrusted with very sensitive information.” Although he claimed to “take that trust very, very seriously,” Edwards routinely squandered that trust when hearings became public and he could show off his trial lawyering skills.
Trial lawyers never ask a question they don’t already know the answer to, and Edwards never did. During an open meeting with George Tenet, then-Director of Central Intelligence, and Dale Watson, then-FBI executive assistant director for counterterrorism and counterintelligence, while cameras whirred and reporters scribbled hastily away, Edwards demanded of Tenet, whom he’d already interviewed in secret meetings: “When is the last time we had information indicating (Osama Bin Laden) was still alive?” Because Tenet feared publicly implicating a secret intelligence source, Tenet offered he’d “be happy to talk about all of this in closed session” as he’d done previously.
Edwards then posed questions about the location of Al-Qaeda US “sleeper cells” to Watson, who’d also previously briefed Edwards. Watson demurred: “I think I’ll hold that conversation in closed hearing.”
Meeting with Robert Muller, FBI director, Edwards demanded: “Are those (Al-Qaeda) people still at large?” Director Mueller winced, “I hate to get into it in open forum. Let me just put it that way.” Yet only days later, Edwards went on television to talk about the US Al-Qaeda “sleeper cells” and revealed information he’d obtained in “meetings this past week with the FBI director.”
Even undercover FBI field agents protested Edwards’ public inquisitions, which endangered secret operations.
“Senator, this is still a pending investigative lead that could lead to a prosecution” of terrorists, one agent warned Edwards. Perhaps the best answer is to take away Berger’s socks.
And stuff them into Edwards’ mouth. That might keep secret things secret just a while longer.
(Sarah Whalen is an expert in Islamic law and taught law at Loyola University School of Law in New Orleans, Louisiana).
