Berger Bargain III

The Wall Street Journal editorial page revisited the Berger Affair today and the article is again available on the free OpinionJournal site. The Journal decries some readers who just "won't let a bad conspiracy theory go." We confess to having been among the unconvinced. Today's followup clarifies things:

"The confusion seems to stem from the mistaken idea that there were handwritten notes by various Clinton Administration officials in the margins of these documents, which Mr. Berger may have been able to destroy. But that's simply an 'urban myth,' prosecutor Hillman tells us, based on a leak last July that was 'so inaccurate as to be laughable.' In fact, the five iterations of the anti-terror 'after-action' report at issue in the case were printed out from a hard drive at the Archives and have no notations at all.

'Those documents, emphatically, without doubt--I reviewed them myself--don't have notations on them,' Mr. Hillman tells us. Further, 'there is no evidence after comprehensive investigation to suggest he took anything other than the five documents at issue and they didn't have notes.' Mr. Berger's sentencing is scheduled for July, and Mr. Hillman assures us Justice's sentencing memo will lay out the facts and 'make sure Mr. Berger explains what he did and why he did it.' Meanwhile, conservatives don't do themselves any credit when they are as impervious to facts as the loony left."

Mr. Hillman has removed the trace of ambiguity that remained in his previous statements. We still think the punishment is rather light, considering Berger did remove classified documents and repeatedly lie about it. However, it is not ridiculously light.

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