Another Pants Check

Scandal: Last we heard of Sandy Berger, Bill Clinton's national security adviser, he was being fined and placed on probation for stealing top-secret documents. Is there more to this tale of purloined papers?

Rep. Tom Davis thinks there is. "I'm not convinced that he was acting alone," the Virginia Republican said on the Fox News special "Socks, Scissors, Paper: The Sandy Berger Caper" that aired Saturday night.

Davis believes someone in the Clinton administration "could have well said: 'Sandy, do you remember that document way back -- that I wrote to you. ... We can't get this into the record. This is gonna make us look terrible.'"

Davis' suspicions are justified. We have felt that there's more, probably much more, to this case than what the public has learned. We'd like to know just how much a man charged with our national security compromised that security for political reasons.

In preparing for his 2003 testimony for the 9/11 Commission hearings, Berger was given access to top-secret dossiers from the Clinton years in the National Archives. He later admitted to stuffing his clothes with classified documents and leaving the building with them. He also admitted he destroyed a document that was linked to the Clinton administration's record on terrorism. He further admitted that he lied about having the documents that he stole.

It was all just an "honest mistake," said Berger. Yet he was seen furtively tramping around at night outside the National Archives building in a nearby construction site, where he hid documents under a trailer and later picked them up. Was the mistake the fact that he didn't do a good enough job to get away with it?

For his "mistake," Berger was allowed to plead guilty to misdemeanor charges. He was fined $50,000, given two years' probation, stripped of his security clearance for three years, and ordered to take a polygraph test and perform 100 hours of community service.

At the very least, the Justice Department has to force Berger to take the polygraph. Even better, it should reopen the probe to find the answers to two lingering questions.

First, did Berger's crimes go beyond those he pleaded guilty to? Like Davis, Archive Inspector General Paul Brachfeld, who headed the first probe of the Berger case, can't shake the feeling that more might have been taken.

And second, because it's obvious Berger took the documents to cover up something that would embarrass someone in the White House, was he acting on his own or taking a bullet for someone else in the administration?

The public deserves to know, especially when Democrats may soon be asking voters to elect another Clinton.

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