National Burger Day

PICTURED (L to R) Former President Bill Clinton, Sandy Berger, Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of State

Bill Clinton’s national security adviser, Sandy Berger, was a failure.  On his watch an assassination attempt against Osama bin Laden in 1998 failed when a Tomahawk missile was fired at his encampment.  Trouble was, according to the CIA, bin Laden had left the camp before the attack.

After the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, Berger appeared before the 9/11 Commission to testify on what kind of warnings had been passed on to his successors in the George W. Bush Administration and whether enough had been done to address the rising threat of al-Qaeda.

A 2007 report by the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform revealed Berger made four trips to the reading room of the National Archives in Washington. He did so presumably to refresh his memory before testifying first to the Graham-Goss Congressional Committee and then to the 9/11 Commission. He made his first visit in May 2002, his last in October 2003.

During at least three of those visits, he stole and destroyed an incalculable number of documents.   He stuffed the documents in his pants and socks spiriting them out of the building, hid them in a nearby construction trailer and retrieved them at a later date.

"The full extent of Berger's document removal," said the House report, "is not known and never can be known."

He pleaded guilty in 2005 to removing the highly classified documents and was fined $50,000, sentenced to two years’ probation, ordered to perform 100 hours of community service and stripped of his security clearance.

One headline at the time read “FBI Grills Berger.”

Wait a minute. 

It’s National Burger Day not National Berger Day.  Never mind.