Sandy Berger. ? ? ? ? . This story just gets weirder and weirder. The possibility that his telephone calls from the archives were monitored by an "unauthorized agency" would seem to suggest the calls were monitored by a second agency as well, right? Presumably - an authorized agency to know about the first agency conducting the unauthorized monitoring? And he is being accused of putting files back into the archives on the second and third visits?

UPDATE: Readers have written to inform me the owner of this Pittsburgh Tribune Review, Richard Mellon Scaife, is "a known right-wing smear merchant," who made Clinton the chief target of his vendetta. More recently they were "involved in an incident where a reporter baited Teresa Heinz Kerry and got her to say 'Shove it' to him." [Kevin Drum has more on this.]

Reader Lauren Sedowsky writes, "To call Scaife 'a known right-wing smear merchant' really does not do justice to his position as heir to the $1 B Mellon fortune, as well as a small newspaper group, and director of the Scaife family of foundations (Scaife, Sarah Scaife, Carthage, Allegheny), which have funded the seminal right-wing think-tanks, publications and propagandist scholars . . . over the last 30 years. He is a major force behind the revolution unraveling before our very eyes, in which the Clinton assault was a mere skirmish."

Apologies, I should have known. Thanks to Thomas Brooks, Nick Sweeney and Lauren Sedowsky for the background.

MORE: Senate Democrats want to know why the Bush administration has asked the director of the National Archives to resign.

Posted by Laura at July 25, 2004 11:36 PM