On September 24 of this year I made two predictions:
1 The findings of the CBS/Dan Rather fraud investigation wouldn’t be made public until after election day.
2 The Sandy Berger investigation will never happen.
Granted, those predictions were not that difficult to make. In September, we had all come to expect that the left would do whatever it could to get its candidate elected. When the CBS fraud was uncovered by a number of knowledgeable bloggers, stonewalling was the rule at CBS and across the rest of the elite media. The same stonewalling held true regarding the Sandy Berger case. Even worse, in both instances the culprits blamed conservatives for trying to “smear” them.
After the reelection of President Bush, on November 27, 2004, I predicted that CBS appointed investigators would issue a vague report of findings. That is exactly what happened. The panel found that there was not enough evidence to lead to a claim of media bias and purposeful lying. CBS fired a few peons and Rather escaped to the hell that is “60 Minutes” without public sanction.
However, I was wrong in my prediction about the Berger situation. I said on November 27 that I did not expect to hear much more from the Berger “investigation”. On Friday, April 1, it was announced that Berger would cop a plea and never really admit that he was guilty of intentional theft of documents from the National Archives. The article was placed on the inner pages of many of the nation’s newspapers.
Berger continues to assert that the episode was “an honest mistake”. Despite this assertion, Berger took several reports from the Archives in his clothing. It is hard to “accidentally” place papers in your clothing. The fact remains that several drafts of sensitive after-action reports are missing. Those reports deal with the
No reasonable person could believe that the incident was a simple mistake. A reasonable person would have to conclude that the information was taken intentionally from the Archives. A reasonable person would have to conclude that either:
- Berger took the documents to hide information that would embarrass the hapless
- Berger took the documents to assist John Kerry in his bid for the presidency
The entire investigation and court proceeding have been under the radar until now. Berger could have been sentenced to a year in prison and a $100,000 fine. Instead, by pleading guilty and copping a plea he will pay a $10,000 fine and surrender his security clearance for three years.
I was wrong about the way the Berger situation ended. I was not wrong about the consequences.
Rather and Berger both got off easy. Had the shoe been on the Republican instead of the Democrat foot, I dare say the outcome would have been different.
