Combating Terrorism With Public Relations

Betsy Newmark writes, “It’s about time that people remember Sandy Berger“:

One benefit of the controversy surrounding Path to 9/11 is that people are beginning to remember that there was once a National Security Adviser named Sandy Berger who later stole Top Secret documents from the National Archives.

In her lengthy post, Betsy looks at what documents Berger stole. And Jim Geraghty’s PR rep sent me a copy of his new book, Voting To Kill, which includes this extremely prescient quote from a 2001 New Yorker article on the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing:

Almost before Freeh could finish, Berger demanded, “Who else knows about this?” Did the press know? This was the last question that Freeh expected from a national-security adviser. Not many people knew, Freeh replied. The information was very closely held. Berger also questioned some of the statements linking the bombing to the Iranian government.

“That’s just hearsay,” Berger said.

“No, Sandy,” Freeh replied. “It’s testimony of a co-conspirator in furtherance of a conspiracy.” Berger, Freeh later thought, was not a national-security adviser; he was a public-relations hack, interested in how something would play in the press. After more than two years, Freeh had concluded that the Administration did not really want to resolve the Khobar bombing.

And that cycle of being more interested in how something would play in the media rather than actually killing terrorists very much appears to be repeating itself with Berger and the rest of the Clintonistas’ reaction to The Path To 9/11.

(Watch this space for more on Geraghty’s new book in the coming weeks.)