Storm Over Berger Intensifies on Eve of Sept. 11 Report

Republicans and Democrats traded political shots Wednesday over the disclosure that former national security advisor Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger removed classified documents from the National Archives last summer.

Congressional Republicans, warning that national security had been threatened, announced an investigation into the matter Wednesday. Democrats demanded to see Bush administration correspondence on the issue and accused the White House of leaking the story for political advantage.

The controversy continued to occupy much of Washington on the eve of today’s release of a final report on the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 and as Democrats prepared to open their national convention Monday and nominate Sen. John F. Kerry as their presidential nominee. But whether the furor about Berger proves important to the presidential campaign remains uncertain, analysts said.

“This campaign, from now until Nov. 2, is going to be full of 24- and 48-hour stories,” said Stephen Hess, who studies political campaigns at the Brookings Institution. “Every little mistake ... every misplaced envelope, is going to be called to attention by one side and denounced by the other. And then two days later there will be something else.”

“This does not appear to be amounting to anything today,” Hess added. “It is the sort of thing that is not likely to amount to something tomorrow. But could it? We could all be surprised.”

The uproar was triggered by the disclosure this week that the FBI was investigating Berger’s removal, and subsequent loss, of classified material from the National Archives. Berger, who served as President Clinton’s top national security aide, emerged Wednesday to say he was sorry.

“I made an honest mistake. It’s one that I deeply regret,” Berger said.

The key documents involved, according to Berger’s lawyer, were copies of drafts of a secret Clinton administration analysis of its handling of a terrorist millennium plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport. Berger was reviewing them to prepare for his testimony before the bipartisan commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks.

“Everything that I have done all along in this process has been for the purpose of aiding and supporting the work of the 9/11 commission, and any suggestion to the contrary is simply, absolutely wrong,” Berger said.

That wasn’t good enough for Republicans.

“It’s a very serious matter,” President Bush said Wednesday in his first remarks on the episode.

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) announced that the House Government Reform Committee would investigate. He demanded to know: “What happened to those missing documents? Whose hands did they fall into? What kind of security risk does that pose to Americans today?”

When the National Archives realized some documents were missing, it contacted Berger, who returned most of them but couldn’t find others, he said. Berger said he “apparently had accidentally discarded them.”

Democrats, rather than address the issues of why the veteran national-security expert would remove the classified documents and his loss of some of them, attacked the leak of the inquiry into the matter.

Kerry’s campaign accused the administration Wednesday of orchestrating the leak to divert attention from today’s release of the final report by the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission.

Berger was serving as an unpaid advisor to the Kerry campaign. He quit Tuesday after the investigation was disclosed.

Asked late Wednesday whether he had known previously about the investigation of Berger, Kerry told NBC News, “I didn’t have a clue.”

The White House said it did not know who leaked the story. “I know of no one in the White House that is aware of how this story came about, “ spokesman Scott McClellan said.

McClellan added that the White House office of legal counsel had known about the investigation of Berger for “quite some time.” He said the office was alerted because of its role in coordinating the production of documents for the Sept. 11 commission. The investigation itself began in October.

Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe filed a Freedom of Information Act request for correspondence between the Department of Justice and the White House about the Berger investigation.

McAuliffe noted in his request that the investigation began nine months ago, “Yet the criminal investigation only came to light three days prior to the release of a report expected to be critical of the Bush administration’s lack of focus on the events leading up to the 9/11 attacks.”

Schmitt reported from Washington and Gold from Boston.