Posted on: Monday, July 26, 2004

EDITORIAL
Making too much of the Berger affair

'Tis the season, of course, for politicians to circle like hungry sharks around the first hint of scandal involving the other party. But we think congressional Republicans should be embarrassed for mistaking Sandy Berger's security difficulties for red meat.

Berger, former President Clinton's national security adviser, has been busted — properly so — for removing copies of classified documents from the National Archives. He was researching his administration's antiterrorism measures for the Sept. 11 commission.

Berger's offense is both inexcusable and — it so far appears — inconsequential, and completely unworthy of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's assessment that it amounts to a "national security crisis."

The original documents, which were seen by the 9/11 commission staff, are intact. Yet Republicans are calling for congressional hearings.

These are the same congressional leaders who shrug at a White House leak that illegally exposed a CIA agent's identity to punish her husband, a critic of administration policy, and at the slow pace of the Justice Department investigation of it.

Congressional leaders should reflect on what the Berger leak says about the independence and objectivity of federal prosecutors, and what the pattern of leaks from the administration says about its willingness to leverage a nation's concern about its security for political gain.