A couple of questions: why does Berger have these high clearances years after he left government?

Did he have a need to know? Even if you have the requisite clearance, you cannot access classified material if you don’t have a legitimate need to know. I don’t think covering up a screw-up counts.

The odds are that this was not a dangerous security breach. But there are reasons it might have been. A former National Security Advisor might be worth keeping an eye on for some hostile groups. That advisor’s trash might get regular picking through.

Berger says the documents were destroyed. How? A shredder? There are computer programs to take scanned shreds and turn them back into a document. Compared to the work that went into Venona (which would be a lot faster today), this is utterly trivial.

Burned? Yeah, right. Tossed in the trash? Most likely – especially if it were inadvertent.

Berger needs to be prosecuted for every crime he did, and there may have been several (taking classified material off premises, improper disposal, failure to report lost material, etc). Let the justice system work.

Find out who else may have had access. Did someone ask Berger to do this? If so, we have a conspiracy and another criminal.