President fails to secure documents, lets Sandy Berger steal
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JoeUser Forums
JoeUser Forums
I see that one of the good Doctors has beaten me to the punch in this topic, but I wanted to add a few comments without clouding the original comments that Dr. Guy had in his article here.
I would say I'm surprised at what happened in the Sandy Berger case, but if I did, I'd be lieing.
I am also not surprised that the persistent whiners among us, those that constantly belittle everything that President Bush does or says have sat on their hands and not made a peep about Sandy Berger and the damage that he may have done to our national security.
It could be argued that the damage that Sandy Berger did to our national security in losing these documents is nothing compared to the damage that he and his compatriots in the Clinton Administration did back before President Bush took office. I'm sure that there are those among us that would try to argue the point, but certainly the policies of Clinton / Gore set us on the path to the policies that have been required under Bush to combat Al Qaeda and the like.
Above, I mention that what happened with Sandy Berger didn't surprise me. That is up to, and including the weak penalty that Berger faces. You see, in my past military history, dealing with a command that was so top heavy with officers (we used to joke about the place being a literal brass mine) I had run into just the same sort of problems. We had, in my time, officers that took classified materials home in their briefcase, to let secretaries in their civilian jobs word process raw materials and drafts into final reports. Of course the secretaries had no clearances, and the documents and materials were never supposed to leave the secured areas of the command.
In our case, our entire unit was treated to several educational sessions on how to deal with classified materials, and the enlisted personnel were made responsible for literally baby-sitting the officers who had demonstrated their complete incompetence in that area (and several others, including a complete inability to deal with their assigned side-arms, up to and including firing the weapons, cleaning and assembling/disassembling the weaponry. Never mind that 95% of the enlisteds could break down a weapon and reassemble it within 2 minutes, the same percentage of the officers couldn't do the same thing even if they had 2 hours. Several of them literally destroyed weapons when they tried to meet such required tasks and goals). The officer that caused the entire problem, and his friends? Just a little slap on the wrist. No suspension of his security clearance. No fine. Really nothing but the threat that if the problem occured again, there would be a note added to a personnel file. That for a full-bird Colonel, already well on the way to retirement, with little hope of ever seeing the star. So, again, not much of a punishment.
Some readers look at me as I take up verbal arms against some individuals on these forums as if I am on a one man crusade against those individuals, and they may wonder why I am motivated in this area. Well, the Sandy Berger case just reminds me again of why. Because I have personally seen these "accomplished" and "learned" individuals of high authority work with reckless disregard for the care of the materials they are working with. Be it because they just don't care, or because they are purposefully doing it -- as I suspect was really the case with Berger -- they have done damage to our security because of their actions or inactions, and knowing this burns my butt.
National Security -- hell, Security in general -- is everyone's job. We are only as secure as the weakest link in the chain. In this case, we had an intentionally weak link go back and try to alter the history to show that his bosses were less responsible than evidence might otherwise show.
Heck, just typing this, I'm tempted to go back and enter another reply in a certain COL's thread about border security. One in which I'd ask who the hell was guarding the borders, and why they shouldn't be tossed in jail for failing to do so, back when Muhammad Atta and friends enterred the country and took their pilot lessons, well before President Bush really became responsible for any of those problems. Of course we already know that the COL would just ignore that issue and claim he's not responsible for it anyway, as he did his part by voting against Bush. Too bad the COL failed miserably, like many of his compatriots, in their efforts to vote against Bush, meaning yet again, I could say I blame Gene.
I would say I'm surprised at what happened in the Sandy Berger case, but if I did, I'd be lieing.
I am also not surprised that the persistent whiners among us, those that constantly belittle everything that President Bush does or says have sat on their hands and not made a peep about Sandy Berger and the damage that he may have done to our national security.
It could be argued that the damage that Sandy Berger did to our national security in losing these documents is nothing compared to the damage that he and his compatriots in the Clinton Administration did back before President Bush took office. I'm sure that there are those among us that would try to argue the point, but certainly the policies of Clinton / Gore set us on the path to the policies that have been required under Bush to combat Al Qaeda and the like.
Above, I mention that what happened with Sandy Berger didn't surprise me. That is up to, and including the weak penalty that Berger faces. You see, in my past military history, dealing with a command that was so top heavy with officers (we used to joke about the place being a literal brass mine) I had run into just the same sort of problems. We had, in my time, officers that took classified materials home in their briefcase, to let secretaries in their civilian jobs word process raw materials and drafts into final reports. Of course the secretaries had no clearances, and the documents and materials were never supposed to leave the secured areas of the command.
In our case, our entire unit was treated to several educational sessions on how to deal with classified materials, and the enlisted personnel were made responsible for literally baby-sitting the officers who had demonstrated their complete incompetence in that area (and several others, including a complete inability to deal with their assigned side-arms, up to and including firing the weapons, cleaning and assembling/disassembling the weaponry. Never mind that 95% of the enlisteds could break down a weapon and reassemble it within 2 minutes, the same percentage of the officers couldn't do the same thing even if they had 2 hours. Several of them literally destroyed weapons when they tried to meet such required tasks and goals). The officer that caused the entire problem, and his friends? Just a little slap on the wrist. No suspension of his security clearance. No fine. Really nothing but the threat that if the problem occured again, there would be a note added to a personnel file. That for a full-bird Colonel, already well on the way to retirement, with little hope of ever seeing the star. So, again, not much of a punishment.
Some readers look at me as I take up verbal arms against some individuals on these forums as if I am on a one man crusade against those individuals, and they may wonder why I am motivated in this area. Well, the Sandy Berger case just reminds me again of why. Because I have personally seen these "accomplished" and "learned" individuals of high authority work with reckless disregard for the care of the materials they are working with. Be it because they just don't care, or because they are purposefully doing it -- as I suspect was really the case with Berger -- they have done damage to our security because of their actions or inactions, and knowing this burns my butt.
National Security -- hell, Security in general -- is everyone's job. We are only as secure as the weakest link in the chain. In this case, we had an intentionally weak link go back and try to alter the history to show that his bosses were less responsible than evidence might otherwise show.
Heck, just typing this, I'm tempted to go back and enter another reply in a certain COL's thread about border security. One in which I'd ask who the hell was guarding the borders, and why they shouldn't be tossed in jail for failing to do so, back when Muhammad Atta and friends enterred the country and took their pilot lessons, well before President Bush really became responsible for any of those problems. Of course we already know that the COL would just ignore that issue and claim he's not responsible for it anyway, as he did his part by voting against Bush. Too bad the COL failed miserably, like many of his compatriots, in their efforts to vote against Bush, meaning yet again, I could say I blame Gene.
