SECOND UPDATE: Sandy Bergler's Pants

Former Clinton White House official, Bruce Lindsey, denied reports that he met with Sandy Bergler for damage control. That may well be, but at this point I trust his word about as much a CBS employee's insistance that fake Bush memos were aired out of competitive and myopic zeal rather than any political bias.

Of note in this article is the nature of the "accidently" destroyed articles. "Among the documents Berger lifted were multiple drafts of a report assessing the 2000 millennium threat that is said to conclude that only luck prevented a terrorist attack then." Not only would that conflict with Bergler's "honest" sworn testimony to the 9/11 Commission, but it also reminded me of Richard Clarke's self importance. From yesterday's New York Sun article about the soothsaying Clarke:

"An author who interviewed Mr. Clarke extensively for his book "Losing Bin Laden," Richard Miniter, said, "In 1999, Al Qaeda attempted to carry out a series of attacks inside the United States largely along the lines of what Clarke predicted in the Atlantic Monthly. Each of those plots was thwarted by a special team run by Mr. Clarke without the Patriot Act, national ID cards, or any other changes in law."

I'm sure Clarke believes that story, but I'm guessing those thwarted plans were more a result of luck and alert border patrols rather than anything of Clarke's doing.