Hollywood,
“n my experience, the way you handle this is to photocopy the original, make redactions on the copy and provide the redacted copy to the requesting party.
Then, if there’s an issue, a neutral (judge, mediator) reviews the original in camera and decides whether to release the unredacted material (in whole or in part) to the requestor.”
I fail to see how this materially changes my, admittedly, knuckleheaded speculation.
Berger could have made redactions rather than stealing the docs. No argument there. He could have done anything, he was the one with the choices. Of the choices available to him, and none of us know the full range, the one choice he didn’t make was “open up as much as possible as far as possible for the good of the country”. Whatever choice he made wasn’t that one. We also know that, of the choices available to him, he chose one that had something to do with trying to something off the table of potential subjects for scrutiny by the commission. Those seems to be the only “known knowns” at this point.
If he merely redacts and someone calls him on “why did you redact this from a draft” or “why was it important to redact the identity of the person making this redacting commentary” or “can you redact a bit less”, he’s got to be subject to some form of “review” and/or “mediation” as well as political pressure.
He wouldn’t want a “redaction” action in the same way he wouldn’t want his notes grabbed so he stuffed them down his longjohns. Once one has made a fundamentally risky choice (try to hide classified info from some smooth operators and honest injuns) then the choice becomes how much risk to take in the hiding and how much risk of discovery to leave behind. “Losing” the documents entirely is a valid choice for “risk management” here.
Depending on the “mission” at hand, the decision at the moment of choice may be “I’m in for a penny and they’ll have to drag the rest of the dollar out of me a nickle at a time if they are smart enough” or the choice may be “if I’m in for a penny I might as well be in for the whole dollar right up front”.
