The Great Man Theory of Lawbreaking
Ever since April Fool’s Day, when Clinton national security adviser Samuel L. “Sandy” Berger admitted in U.S. District Court that he had removed classified materials from the National Archives on two occasions in the fall of 2003 (and had personally destroyed with scissors three of the documents he pilfered), The Scrapbook has taken great pleasure in rereading moldy newspaper clippings and television transcripts from July 2004, when news of the investigation into Berger’s theft first leaked.
Of the hundreds of articles written last summer, and the hundreds of TV minutes logged, our favorites are those in which Berger’s lawyer, former Clinton counsel Lanny Breuer, jumped through rhetorical hoops to prove his client was the victim of a Republican “character assassination.”
Sandy Berger didn’t know what he was doing when he took the documents, Breuer insisted; how dare those awful Republicans make Sandy Berger the focus of a “partisan” investigation; and (this was the heart of the matter) how dare anyone impugn the conduct of such a great American. That, in a nutshell, is what Breuer told CNN host Wolf Blitzer on July 20, 2004:
Breuer: Wolf, I think the only people who are making that allegation are people who today are going on TV and on radio and are trying to spin this in a political firestorm. Not once has the Department of Justice made that allegation. It is categorically false. Anyone who knows Sandy, who knows every ounce of Sandy Berger is that of a great patriot and it’s sad that today people are making these kinds of assertions.
It’s what Breuer told Katie Couric on July 21. “Katie,” he said,
And it’s what he told host Bill Hemmer on CNN’s American Morning that same, um, morning:
According to a Justice Department press release issued the day he pled guilty, Berger “knew he was not authorized to remove the classified documents from the Archives,” but that didn’t stop him. “Initially, Berger did not tell the Archives staff that he had taken the documents,” the press release went on, “but later that night told Archives staff that he had ‘accidentally misfiled’ two of them. The next day, he returned to Archives staff the two remaining copies of the five documents he had taken during the September and October visits.” He had destroyed the other three.
“He kind of knew that ultimately he’d have to return the documents,” someone close to Berger told us last week. “Better get caught returning two than five.” The source continued: “A lot of the facts that came out last summer were wrong.” But we doubt Lanny Breuer’s losing any sleep over it. He did what advocates are paid hundreds of dollars an hour to do.
More baffling are the echoes of the “great man” defense coming from unpaid advocates, like the Wall Street Journal editorial page, which last week argued that the Berger plea–in return for a $10,000 fine and loss of his security clearance for three years–“looks to be a reasonable outcome” and that “prosecutors have shown some commendable restraint against a high-powered political figure.”
Well, we’re certainly not arguing for prosecutorial overreach, but shouldn’t the law treat high-powered figures just like low-powered figures? As the Journal editorial concedes, “lesser officials have received harsher penalties [than Berger] for more minor transgressions.” We hope our friends on the right won’t make a habit of speaking power to truth.
Credit Where Due
Almost a hundred readers emailed us for the sound file of the Harvard law students’ musical send-up of Laurence Tribe (which can now be heard at www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/drama/parodyhome.htm). Former Tribe students and high-octane D.C. lawyers were heavily overrepresented in this sample, but don’t worry, guys, we’re not giving up your names.
We should, however, have named the parodists, who risked their future partnerships to give the rest of us a few cheap laughs at Tribe’s expense (but judging by the credentials of their fans, their careers are still assured). Alphabetically: Jamie Auslander, Jeremy Blachman, Taylor Dasher, Andi Friedman, Rebecca Ingber, and Justin Shanes.
“Non-fake but Inaccurate!”
In an article in our April 4 issue, “The ABCs of Media Bias,” we reported–inaccurately, it turns out–that the crass memo touting the partisan advantages for Senate Republicans of defending Terri Schiavo “didn’t come from” Florida senator Mel Martinez. Having been shown the memo by a reporter on March 20, Martinez then insisted, “I reject those [talking points]. I’ve never seen them before today.” Last Wednesday, however, Martinez admitted that the memo had in fact been written by an aide, who has now resigned.
Mike Allen of the Washington Post–who with ABC’s Linda Douglass first reported the existence of the memo–last week revealed that Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin was given the memo by Martinez, who clarified in a statement that he had been clueless about what was on the piece of paper he gave Harkin on the Senate floor. “Unbeknownst to me, instead of my one page on the bill, I had given him a copy of the now infamous memo that at some point along the way came into my possession,” the freshman senator said.
Slate‘s Mickey Kaus, to whom The Scrapbook owes the headline on this item, argues that the Post and ABC, while vindicated on the authorship of the memo, overplayed the story:
Piled Higher and Deeper
In what may be the unlikeliest headline of the year, the Associated Press reported last week: “Harvard Professor Accused of Stealing Manure.”
In a story datelined Rockport, Mass., the reporter explained, “A Harvard economics professor has been accused of neglecting the standard market practice of paying for goods and services by trying to steal a truckload of manure from a horse farmer. Stable manager Phillip Casey says Martin Weitzman, Harvard University’s Ernest E. Monrad Professor of Economics, has been stealing manure from Charlie Lane’s Rockport farm for years.”
We had been under the impression that the Harvard faculty was a net exporter of manure, producing far more than required for its own consumption, but we stand corrected.
