Asymmetrical Information

No

If he was not covering SOMETHING up, why did he shred the documents. I mean, what would be the point? I have yet to hear a rational alternative hypothesis.

Occam's Razor dominates here (baring Sandy's scissors and some other evidence).

If he was not covering SOMETHING up, why did he shred the documents. I mean, what would be the point? I have yet to hear a rational alternative hypothesis.

He was making confetti for John Kerry's upcoming victory celebration?

Ooops. I'm sorry--you asked for a *rational* explanation.

FWIW Yglesias has since updated the post content to reflect that he may have misunderstood the press reports.

anony -- indicating, perhaps, that Mr. Yglesias was quick off the dime with an excuse. It happens to cheerleaders on both sides.

Sandy Berger only walked away with several different annotated personal copies of Richard Clarke's millennium report.

Would anybody mind if someone walked off with Fermat's personal copy of Diophantus' Arithmetica?

"If (2), this is weird, but I think it's clear that nothing of significance is being covered-up, because if there were it would be reflected in the originals and the White House would just leak it. "

---Matthew Yglesias

Nonsense. The documents could include material that cannot presently be released to the general public. This is why many of them are in the historical archives.

What was his motive then, if he wasn't covering up?

There must be some way to explain his actions.

Actually, Yglesias' basis for the rationale behind his "the (current) white house would just leak it" comment is utterly off the mark. First, of course, is the point David brings up about the sensitivity of the information. Which, considering the documents in question, may be of some significance. Second though is the somewhat more interesting point that the current administration has shown very little, bordering on no, predilections towards openly embarrassing the Clinton administration. Yglesias' thinking seems to be along the lines of "Berger is an 'enemy' of the Bush administration, so the Bushies would, logically, do anything in their power to hurt him, if they could" which then transmutes to "since they haven't, they can't, so there is no scandal". Which is basically just another way of saying that petty and vindictive behavior on the part of the Bush administration can be relied on as if it were a physical law of the universe. I can understand why folks in Matthew's camp would consider such to be a valid line of reasoning, however I see very little basis in fact for it.

Are those your documents, or are you just glad to see me?

Robin made a good point. When the Clinton administration was out of office, I was hoping that we would finally learn more about how much money from the Chinese military went to Clinton and the DNC, and about Enron executives going on those Ron Brown trade trips, getting deals in India, Indonesia, Turkey, Bolivia, the Philippines and China supported by U.S. taxpayers (through the Export-Import Bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corp.), and making big donations to Clinton and the DNC, among other things. While it's true that Enron made more contributions to Republicans than to Democrats, there's also plenty of evidence that Enron received far more in return from Democrats than from Republicans.

If Bush had wanted to embarrass the Clinton administration, he could have released all kinds of material that I think we have a right to see.

All of this is nice speculation and all, but it's pretty much beside the point. The point is that Mr. Berger, counter to every security regulation I'm aware of, removed documents from their proper container (the Archives) without signing them out. He then removed said documents to an authorized container (his room) and proceeded to destroy documents for which he was accountable. These documents aren't entered into accountability out of sheer capriciousness, you know.

So, a) he broke the rules, and b) he destroyed something that didn't belong to him. His motives in doing so are interesting, but irrelevant until such time as they can be positively determined.

But of course, Slartibarfast, "sleepwalking" (his hands somehow managed to act without recourse to his brain in stuffing docs into his clothing, which had the entirely unintentional effect of concealing them from view, then, again acting alone, they managed to find scissors and - probably for fine-motor practice or something - shredded three of them; imagine Mr. Berger's surprise) is the silliest possible motive, and can be discounted out of hand, ISTM. And every other possible motive involves either stupidity ("What's this? There are five copies of the same thing? I'll just save some room in the ol' Archives. No need to bother the archivist with a little thing like this. Now, where'd I put those scissors...") or trying to destroy something, which tends to be undertaken when the "something" is perceived as harmful. Stupidity vs. coverup.

Comments are Closed.