Sandy Berger, The Continuing Saga

For decent coverage of this topic, I'd look to Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo.

From my own standpoint, after much reading and listening, I'm not certain what to believe. The wild tales of sock- and underwear-stuffing sounds really unbelievable, and so does the fact that this information is being released now, some nine months into the investigation, on the eve of the release of the 9-11 panel report and on the doorstep of the Democratic National Convention.

I also think it's highly unlikely that Berger stole them to benefit Kerry when Kerry was not the candidate 9 months ago and that Berger, as former NSA chief and someone who had access to the documents and read them, would have had special value to offer Kerry from specific pages.

Berger's explanation - save for some kind of proof that he had documents sticking out of his socks - sounds more plausible than some of the purple prose about it being printed.

Should he be treated differently from a Republican or a Green or other party member for his actions, if true? Hell, no. I even dismiss from this that we've had four years of "lost" papers, no-bid contracts, unread intelligence, etc. from the Bushies. Wrong is wrong, and if Berger is wrong in what he did and he indeed broke some law or truly endangered national security, he deserves whatever would be meted out to anyone else like Dr. Rice in a similar position.

Should Kerry take some huge hit for this? He says he didn't even know Berger was under investigation (that's what he said to Tom Brokaw) and was not furnished with any confidential papers from Berger. Why should he be injured? I'm not even certain that this investigation would have precluded Berger from serving as an advisor to Kerry. These conflicts of strange interest are everywhere in the Bush Administration. No one's charging Berger with anything yet, and even from what we've heard thus far, no one's claiming he gave them to bin Laden or Iran (our new George Tenet and Iraq).

But if Kerry didn't know about the investigation, Berger probably should have mentioned it.