Sandy Bergler, Bill Clinton’s National Security Adviser who admitted to stealing classified records associated with the run up to 9-11 and destroying them, was fined $50,000 for his actions. I am sure Bill Clinton was able to get someone to donate the 59G’s to poor Sandy:

A judge on Thursday ordered Sandy Berger, President Clinton’s national security adviser, to pay a $50,000 fine for illegally taking classified documents from the National Archives.

The punishment handed down by U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson exceeded the $10,000 fine recommended by government lawyers. Under the deal, Berger avoids prison time but he must surrender access to classified government materials for three years.

“The court finds the fine is inadequate because it doesn’t reflect the seriousness of the offense,” Robinson said, as a grim-faced Berger stood silently.

Earlier in the hearing, Berger expressed remorse for his crime, which he described as a lapse of judgment that came while he was preparing to testify before the Sept. 11 commission.

“I let considerations of personal convenience override clear rules of handling classified material,” Berger said. “I believe this lapse, serious as it is, does not reflect the character of myself.”

What convenience? Would it be personally inconvenient if all your testimony to the 9-11 commission was a tissue of lies? Would it be a personal inconvenience if the notes between you and Richard Clarke on the margins of the destroyed documents pointed to some early revelations that Al Qaeda agents were in the US and your team somehow let them go or lost track of them?

The sentencing capped a bizarre sequence of events in which Berger admitted to sneaking classified documents out of the Archives in his suit, later destroying some of them in his office and then lying about it.

After initially saying it was an “honest mistake,” Berger pleaded guilty in April to a misdemeanor of unauthorized removal and retention of classified material, which contained information relating to terror threats in the United States during the 2000 millennium celebration.

It is only ‘bizarre’ if you are from the media-formally-known-as-mainstream and cannot fathom a democrat official destroying evidence of a crime….