A NEW PAIR OF PANTS

“If Sen. Hillary Clinton is to chart her own course independent of her husband, why did she choose Sandy Berger to give her advice on foreign policy? This suggests reunion time for cronies. In 2003, Mr. Berger took several highly classified documents about the Clinton-era Millennium terror plot from the National Archives while ‘aiding’ the September 11 commission. Mr. Berger successfully negotiated a plea bargain and received only two years probation, along with a security-clearance suspension and a $50,000 fine. Were he anything less than a member of the permanent Clinton establishment, he would be in sitting in a prison cell, with few prospects. But no sooner was his probation time over—it ended last month—than Mrs. Clinton put him back in the game, presumably with a new pair of pants big enough to accommodate purloined documents. This issue is a larger subset of the looming ‘first laddy’ question. In a Hillary Clinton administration, first husband Bill Clinton would inevitably loom large. The Berger news suggests that his old friends and cronies would, too... This could of course be merely a symbolic appointment, with no future for [Berger] at the National Security Council or anywhere else in government. The episode reeks nonetheless... Mrs. Clinton is of course free to fill her foreign-policy ranks with such people, and she is free to open herself to charges of cronyism. She is free to dismiss the fact that Sandy Berger violated the government’s most stringent security rules. But she can’t escape responsibility for it. If the Clintons spend whatever capital they have to help old friends find work, they tell us loud and clear what we’re dealing with.”

—The Washington Times