The Washington Monthly misses the point in its report on Sandy Berger.
“....Sandy Berger may have foolishly removed copies of some classified documents during his trips to the National Archives last year, but that's all they were: copies. The originals are still safe and sound and the 9/11 Commission has "seen everything that the archives saw."
There are two issues here:
1. Did Sandy Berger withhold information from the 9/11 commission?
2. Did Sandy Berger, the former national security advisor in the white House, remove classified material from a secure facility.
If he removed copies, he removed classified material. If I, or any of my colleagues, had done that I would have been jailed, fined or at least fired.
Now we are debating whether or not the Director of National Intelligence should be a cabinet level officer or should be in the White House. Congress, the President and the press will debate this question in depth. Either arrangement will fail if the new director doesn’t restore integrity to the intelligence community.
We have seen cases of FBI agents attempting to pass 9/11 attack related warnings up the chain of command. We have a case of a DIA analyst attempting to refute a claim that Iraqi mobile vans were WMD related.
Why should an FBI agent or a DIA analyst risk a career by taking an unpopular position when it is clear that a presidential level National Security advisor can violate security regulations with impunity? Integrity is achieved by caring for the corporate culture – one of the ten disciplines in workplace spirituality.
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