Sandy Berger with Lies on the side
Below I write about the awful, despicable crime committed by Sandy Berger and the puny punishment he received. There are countless laws that Berger flagrantly violated that the Dept. of Justice ignored in it’s plea agreement. The one the DOJ charged him with is 18 U.S.C. 2071. You’ll note that the DOJ could have sought to put him in prison for three years; instead they opted for none. Another one in particular sticks out in my mind. It’s the False Statement Statute (18 U.S.C. 1001), also known in some circles as the “Martha Stewart Act.” The statute provides:
Sec. 1001. Statements or entries generally
(a) Except as otherwise provided in this section, whoever, in any manner within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial ranch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully -
(1) falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or devise material fact;
(2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or
(3) makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry. . .
The government proves the crime under this statute by showing that (i) you made a false statement or concealed something; (i) the statement was material; (iii) it was done knowingly and willfully; and (iv) you make it directly or indirectly to the United States government. The statement need not be written, silence may be a false statement if it is misleading, and a statement may be a violation of this act even though it is literally true, but is misleading. Each of the three statutes carries a five-year sentence, as Martha Stewart knows all too well. Martha lied about stocks and did jail time. Berger lied about vital national security matters and will pay a fine. How does Martha feel about this? And just because I can’t get over the audacity of it, I’ll point out again that President Clinton found all of this to be a laughing matter.
Others noting the Martha Stewart inconsistency: MuD & PHuD, The American Mind, and Kokonut Pundits.
14 Responses to “Sandy Berger with Lies on the side”
Even just plain stealing from the archives is awful–the lying is only half the matter. Those documents belong to all of us. I can hardly believe that Clinton laughed about it, and this makes me suspicious. Perhaps Clinton didn’t believe the charges at the time?
(I will say, though, that when you speak of the “judicial ranch,” it calls to mind Justice O’Connor’s humble origins:
http://www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/legal_entity/102/biography)
How is that investigation into who blew the cover of CIA agent Valerie Plame going? Robert Novak still at large?
Yes, there should have been a higher penalty. On the other hand, Richard Nixon should have gone to prison for what he did, for what Nixon did was easily 100 times worse.
It was? How so? I fail to see how damaging a political party is worse than damaging the nation’s national security. The only thing that might make Nixon’s worse is that he was actually president, but it remains unclear what role Clinton played in this affair, and either way national security is at stake in a very real way.
Several points.
First, you make the Martha Stewart comparison in a specific way; saying that Martha Stewart spent a year in jail for lying to federal prosecutors. You use this, as far as I can tell, to say that Sandy Berger should have been charged with lying to federal investigators. However, 2 of the pages you link to takes totally different perspectives, and 1 of them I happen to agree with.
The page “The American Mind” brings up the Martha case not to argue that Sandy Berger should have been charged with perjury, but to argue that Berger’s punishment was lenient compared to the maximum sentence, just as Martha’s was lenient compared to the maximum. This in fact is an argument against your question “How does Martha feel about this”…because the writer of that page would probably argue Martha feels pretty good about it, since leniency in punishment kept her in jail for 1 year instead of 5.
The other page is a blog post from January that discusses the Berger case and then notes at the bottom that Martha Stewart is about to be released from Prison, with no connection at all to the Berger case. I honestly don’t have a clue why you linked to that one.
Secondly, do we have full transcripts of the testimony that Mr. Berger gave to the DOJ last year when this matter was first being investigated? I can’t find a statement as to that point in the links on this page. As far as I can tell, his statements were public statements and it would be difficult to construe them as given to teh government.
As far as I knew, one of the main reasons that Martha’s case was unique was that any statement she made could be construed as her speaking as a representative of her company when she spoke at any point, because she was both teh CEO, owner, and name of the company. Therefore, they were able to use that statute against her, because her public statements were taken as a representative of the business at all times.
That’s just a crock to claim that Berger endangered national security. Nixon put at risk our entire democracy, on the other hand.
I’m disappointed that anyone would see Nixon’s actions as merely an attack on a political party. They were a broad, sweeping undermining of our Constitutional government. Barry Goldwater certainly got that.
“Martha lied about stocks and did jail time. Berger lied about vital national security matters and will pay a fine.”
In an outrageous display of whataboutery, I point out that, e.g.,
Cap Weinberger and Oliver North lied about Iran-Contra and were pardoned for their crimes.
Your outrage is just a bit too precious, here, Joshua. I think Berger’s actions are wrong, despicable even. But I’m simply too inured to this sort of thing to get as outraged as you want me to. Being selectively outraged, as you seem to be, isn’t an ethical position.
I’m not going to get into a comparison between this and Watergate, both because I don’t care and I think it’s counter productive. The gravity of the crime is significant and that should be obvious.
As for Martha, I’m only pointing out that Berger also violated the same statute. The 9-11 Commission requested his documents and he destroyed some of them, particularly the handwriten memos discussing what to do with Osama. This is concealing a material fact from the US government.
More important, the Martha comparison is only an interesting academic discussion. Berger violated much more serious crimes and that should be the focus.
If you’re not going to deal with Martha comparisons, then may I ask why you continue to link to 2 sites in the original posts which do not “note the Martha Stewart inconsistency”?
I don’t see where I said I wouldn’t deal with Martha comparisons. If I gave that impression I apologize. I’m comparing the violation of the same statute. Let us use a minor example. One can jaywalk on foot or on a bike. You’re violating the same statute, but in different ways. Martha misled the US government about her stock dealing; Berger misled the US government about documents pertaining to national security. Martha served jail time under the statute; Berger wasn’t prosecuted under the statute at all. I believe Berger’s violation to be much more significant, and yet his punishment is notably less.
I think the matter is serious for the potential damage that could be caused and that alone should merit a prison sentence. Prison time was in order to discourage others who would intend to harm our country. But I think it is incredibly dishonest to claim that American national security was harmed.
As well, although it was quite legal, I think the Bush administration trashing of cooperative alliances has damaged the national security of this country in ways far beyond the Berger case.
“Your outrage is just a bit too precious”. Well, that’s just the point, isn’t it? From my outsider’s perspective, it seems as if a large part of the modern conservative movement is based on selective outrage. Get your rage fix and advance your political interests. It’s win/win.
I liked how the two main news networks told the story:
CNN – “Berger will plead guilty to illegally removing documents from the national archives.”
Fox News (fair and balanced I might add) – “Berger has decided to plead guilty for stuffing top secret documents regarding Clinton’s administration in his jacket and sneaking them out of the archives to destroy them for his former boss.”
In ancient times the conquering king often “pardoned” the the vanquished monarch and let him live even while ordering the slaughter of the citizenry of that conquered country. I often wondered why that was so. I finally decided it was because the conquering king knew that one day he too might need mercy should his kingdom fall. I wonder if our leaders, both Republican and Democrat, go easy on each other because their own hands are not clean and one day they might get caught doing something illegal.