During the months of September and October 2003, former Clinton National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, made at least three trips to the National Archives, ostensibly for the purpose of briefing himself and his former boss, Bill Clinton, for their testimony before the 9/11 Commission. During the time that Berger was given access to highly classified material, he was seen stuffing documents into his trousers, his underwear, and even into his socks.

By the time FBI agents arrived at Berger’s home and office he had already destroyed some of the stolen documents. Berger told FBI agents that he had "inadvertently" removed documents from the Archives and that he had "accidentally" destroyed some of them. So what could have been so important to him or to the former president that he would risk his freedom and his reputation to steal it and destroy it? Let’s look at just a few things we know about the Clinton Administration’s record on fighting Islamic terrorism?

We know, for example, that on March 4, 1995, in the wake of foreign intelligence reports of illegal money being transferred from the Peoples Republic of China to the Clinton-Gore reelection campaign and the Democratic National Committee, Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick issued a memorandum which read, in part, "… it is prudent to establish a set of instructions that will more clearly separate the counter-intelligence investigation from the more limited… criminal investigation. These procedures, which go beyond what is legally required, will prevent any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance that the (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) is being used to avoid procedural safeguards which would apply in criminal investigations."

We know that not every Clinton Administration official was happy with what came to be known as the "Gorelick Wall." On June 13, 1995, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White, who prosecuted the 1993 World Trade Center bombers, objected to the new guidelines. In a letter to Attorney General Janet Reno, White said, "It is hard to be totally comfortable with instructions to the FBI prohibiting contact with the United States Attorney’s Offices when such prohibitions are not legally required."

We know that a top secret group of military intelligence officers, called Able Danger, were aware of 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta and three other al Qaeda hijackers more than a year before they attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Unfortunately, their information was never passed on to the appropriate FBI officials and the hijackers were left to come and go at will, both in the United States and abroad.

We know that, in January 2000, two Saudis, Khalid al-Mihdar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, who later flew a hijacked airliner into the Pentagon, attended a meeting in Malaysia at which plans for the 9/11 attacks were finalized. Both were under CIA surveillance and their movements were reported to FBI counter-intelligence officials. Al-Mihdar and al-Hazmi left Malaysia and moved to San Diego. However, their presence was never reported to the FBI field office and the men were not placed on the FBI "watch list."

We know that, within days of al-Midhar and al-Hazmi’s arrival in San Diego, a British citizen of Pakistani ancestry arrived in New York. After gambling away all of his al-Qaeda funds in the casinos of Atlantic City, he turned himself in to the FBI. He was interrogated by counter-intelligence agents at an FBI safe house in New Jersey where he confessed that he and others had been recruited to crash hijacked airliners into buildings. When counterintelligence agents didn’t believe him, even though he passed a polygraph examination, they released him and he returned to England. His confession was not shared with the FBI Criminal Division.

We know that, in August 2001, Zaccarias Massaoui, a Muslim of French-Morrocan ancestry, was taken into custody by FBI agents in Minneapolis. After enrolling in flight school in Minnesota, Massaoui told his instructors that he was not interested in learning how to take off or land a plane; he was interested only in knowing how to steer a plane in flight. That "probable cause" information was forwarded to FBI headquarters in Washington for the purpose of obtaining a search warrant. With no knowledge of the San Diego and New Jersey terrorists in evidence, the request for a search warrant was denied.

The more we learn about all this, the more questions are raised. For example, what role did the illegal Chinese contributions to the Clinton-Gore reelection campaign play in the development of the Gorelick Memorandum? What national security documents were smuggled out of the National Archives in Berger’s underwear and socks, and what would they have told us about the Clinton Administration’s handling of the al Qaeda terror threat?

However, of more immediate interest, why is Berger now serving as an "unpaid" (wink, wink) national security advisor to Hillary Rodham Clinton? Why is he prominently mentioned as a potential Secretary of State in the "next Clinton Administration?" And finally, why would the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination risk so much political capital on a man who should be behind bars? Is it possible that the Clintons lay awake at night worrying about what would happen to their plans for a return to power if they failed to take good care of their old friend Sandy?