The pot calling the kettle...a Berger?

As we all know, our great defenders of freedom and all that is right -- Republicans in the House and Senate -- are outraged and in a blood lust over Sandy Berger's snatching of papers from the National Archive.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, told reporters that the case was about theft and questioned a statement Berger issued Monday attributing the removal of the documents and notes to sloppiness.

“I think it’s gravely, gravely serious what he did, if he did it. It could be a national security crisis,” DeLay said.

Rep. Joseph Pitts, R-Pa., said, “We should question Senator Kerry’s judgment for placing him in a serious position in his campaign.”

I know there are Those Who Hate American (TWHA) who questioned the timing of the leak that initially indicated Berger was under investigation. After all, the shrill said, the investigation's over a year old and this leak didn't, er, leak out until the week the 9-11 Commission was to release their report.

Be shrill all you want, TWHA, I thought, a national security crisis as grave as this one sometimes requires some nasty, politically-inspired, back-stabbing. And John Kerry's defense, that Berger never bothered to tell the Kerry campaign that he was under investigation, doesn't mean that you shouldn't question Kerry's judgment for making him an advisor. I mean, if competence was the only character of value to a potential president, than where would our Miserable Failure be?

But then I read about Richard Shelby, and I began to think that all of this vitriol over Berger was merely a front for partisan attacks on Kerry and an attempt to change the subject over the 9-11 Commission Report.

Gosh, do you think I've been naive?

Shelby has in the past denied that he ever "knowingly compromised classified information" and his staff told reporters on Saturday that they should refer to the previous statement on the issue he made earlier this year.

The investigation centers on the leak of highly classified intelligence related to al-Qaida communications in June 2002, primarily to CNN.

CNN reported on June 20 that in one communication intercepted by the National Security Agency on Sept. 10, 2001, an individual was overheard saying, "The match begins tomorrow" while in another that same day, a second person said, "Tomorrow is zero hour." In both, the speakers were in Afghanistan and were speaking to individuals in Saudi Arabia. The intercept was not found until Sept. 12, 2001.

The intercept was from a communications channel the United States had identified as a key communications link for al-Qaida operatives.

“Leaking the exact language would presumably tell the two ends of the conversation not to use that channel again since it had been compromised,” one senior U.S. intelligence official told NBC News.

The White House and CIA were incensed by the leak and demanded an investigation. Vice President Dick Cheney was so angered by the leak that he personally called the chairs of both the House and Senate Intelligence committees, believing the leak came from inside the committees.

The committees were viewed immediately as the source of the leak because the information appeared in the media within 24 hours of a CIA briefing on the subject to the committees.

In response, the then-chairs of the committees, Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.), chair of the House intelligence committee, and Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), called on the Justice Department to investigate whatever role the committee may have had in the leak.

Shelby, at the time the ranking member of the Senate committee, also signed the letter, but also stated, "I do believe that the American people need to know a lot about the shortcomings of our intelligence community, but they also need to know the good things that are going on, and what we are going to do in this investigation, I believe, is bring out the best of both."

When asked about Shelby, Rep. Tom Davis, who has been so eager to investigate Berger, and yet so unwilling to investigate the Plame-identity leak, said...well, he doesn't seem to have said much. Rep. Joseph Pitts hasn't had much to say either. Nor has Tom DeLay.

After all, one shouldn't rush to judgment on a thing like this.