American History, 101

It's time for the younger readers out there to learn a bit. The business of running a democratic republic the size and political might of the United States is many times an unseemly one to the untrained eye. Everyone in our nation would love to hear that the acts, deeds, and policies of the country are always in the best interests of the entire world, and conducted with the utmost standards of honor and respectability.

Unfortunately, that is nothing but a pipe-dream.

For most who bemoan a lack of international or national integrity, the fact of the matter is sometimes things are done in the interests of this country only, and that's the way it is. If those who don't like it were to step into the same situations, they themselves would be faced with the same tactical, financial, and ethical dilemma's faced daily by our nation and its leadership.

With that said though, lines do have to be drawn and upheld. Sometimes our leaders lose their compass, and fail to notice or draw those lines between the dirty business that is necessary to keep the behemoth that is our country moving, and acts that are downright unacceptable to anyone.

In what has been well documented for over 30 years now, the President of the United States and dozens of his closest officers committed what amounted to a never-ending series of criminal acts and the coverup thereof, now known as "Watergate." I'm not going to give you the entire Watergate story; there are hundreds of books, movies, and on-line articles that would keep you busy for months if you started reading them right now. I wanted instead to talk briefly about one person, John N Mitchell.

John Mitchell was the Attorney General of the United States at the beginning of the 70's. As AG, by definition, he was the "top cop" in the U.S., and therefore should have been above reproach or suspicion. He was not. In charge of the committee to reelect the president as well as AG, he was directly involved in the Watergate proceedings. In 1977, he was sent to jail in Alabama for 19 months for "Perjury", "Obstruction of Justice", "Illegal spying on American Citizens" (Democratic party leaders), and numerous other charges. John Mitchell died in 1988.

The highest ranking law enforcement officer in this country turned out to be one of its biggest criminals.

In 1999, Sandy Berger was the National Security Advisor to President Clinton. In September of 2005, Mr. Berger was found guilty of stealing secret sensitive documents from the National Archives in Washington after the events of September, 2001. Berger and his lawyer said he knowingly removed the documents and his own handwritten notes by placing them in his jacket, pants and socks, and also inadvertently took copies of actual classified documents in a leather portfolio.

"I deeply regret the sloppiness involved, but I had no intention of withholding documents from the 9/11 commission, and to the contrary, to my knowledge, every document requested by the commission from the Clinton administration was produced," Berger said in a statement.

Interestingly, some drafts of a sensitive after-action report on the Clinton administration's handling of Al Qaeda terror threats during the December 1999 millennium celebration are still missing, officials and lawyers said. Officials said the missing documents also identified America's terror vulnerabilities at airports to seaports, and these documents never ended up in the possession of the 9/11 commission for their review. Mr. Berger was convicted of his crimes, and was fined $50,000.00 and given community service.

The highest ranking official in charge of our national sovereignty and security tried after the fact to hide his mistakes, and in doing so incriminated himself, held out documents we still need to see at this point but cannot, and lied to the commission investigating the worst thing that ever happened to this country.

So there my friends is your history lesson for today.

The highest law enforcement officer in the land broke the law and ending up where he belonged - in prison.

The highest security official in our nation broke the law, endangered the lives of every man, woman, and child in the land, and ended up on the first tee at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Maryland for his morning foursome.

Who says "History repeats itself" ? Does not.