Double standards for Sandy Berger

Today's Editorial
From the Editorials/Op-Ed section
The Washington Times

Double standards for Sandy Berger

As we noted last week, Sandy Berger stole some of the nation's most highly classified terrorism documents from the National Archives. He scissored them to pieces in his downtown Washington offices. Then he lied about it. Mr. Berger's lenient plea bargain with the Justice Department fines him an amount he can shake from the couches at his Stonebridge International LLC offices and promises his security clearances will be restored in time for Election 2008.

It's hard to underestimate the effect a case like this has on national-security professionals. For cynics, it shows that big players get off easy when they commit the crimes smaller fry lose their careers over. Meanwhile, spies, policy-makers and other handlers of secrets are effectively being told their efforts aren't taken seriously. It's a classic Washington double standard.

At this point, the only consolation is that Mr. Berger's future in national-security jobs is in doubt. The bureaucracy already doubts Democratic bona fides, so putting Mr. Berger up for a big job in, say, a Hillary Clinton administration would only worsen things. Of course, a tougher penalty would have, and should have, nullified that possibility."

Read the entire editorial here.