Friends like Sandy Berger

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If Sen. Hillary Clinton is to chart her own course independent of her husband, why did she choose Sandy Berger to give her advice on foreign policy? This suggests reunion time for cronies. In 2003, Mr. Berger took several highly classified documents about the Clinton-era Millennium terror plot from the National Archives while "aiding" the September 11 commission. Mr. Berger successfully negotiated a plea bargain and received only two years probation, along with a security-clearance suspension and a $50,000 fine. Were he anything less than a member of the permanent Clinton establishment, he would be in sitting in a prison cell, with few prospects.

But no sooner was his probation time over — it ended last month — than Mrs. Clinton put him back in the game, presumably with a new pair of pants big enough to accommodate purloined documents. This issue is a larger subset of the looming "first laddy" question. In a Hillary Clinton administration, first husband Bill Clinton would inevitably loom large. The Berger news suggests that his old friends and cronies would, too.

Purely on merits, there's no question that Mr. Berger should be finished in Washington's national-security officialdom. This could of course be merely a symbolic appointment, with no future for him at the National Security Council or anywhere else in government. The episode reeks nonetheless. The Clintonistas try to dismiss the Berger thievery as just another crazy caper in the story of eccentric Sandy. It could not have been that, since the theft was deliberate and elaborate.

Mr. Berger ferreted the highly classified documents out of the Archives — just how is not clear and he denies one popular account that he hid them in his pants — and put them temporarily under a construction trailer. He returned to retrieve them later and subsequently destroyed the documents at his office. This was hardly the work of an overworked man, as the Clintons portrayed it.

If this wasn't some kind of bid to alter the historical record, we're not sure what it would be. The report of the inspector general of the National Archives concludes that he did not steal original documents, merely copies. But no one has determined whether he stole documents on previous visits. Whatever the motive, a serious law was broken.

Mrs. Clinton is of course free to fill her foreign-policy ranks with such people, and she is free to open herself to charges of cronyism. She is free to dismiss the fact that Sandy Berger violated the government's most stringent security rules. But she can't escape responsibility for it. If the Clintons spend whatever capital they have to help old friends find work, they tell us loud and clear what we're dealing with.