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A report that the former Clinton Administration's National Security Adviser Sandy Berger removed from the National Archives documents that stated urgent complaints that the FBI could not decipher bugged conversations between members of a Brooklyn mosque and Afghan terrorists because it lacked translators also included an appeal to hire more translators familiar with Arabic, Pashto and other key, counter-terrorism, languages at the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency and was among 29 proposals to tighten security.

The report written by former White House counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke also warned of the presence of al Qaeda cells inside the United States. It urged increased surveillance of Arab students coming into the United States and called for increased security at U.S. ports and other points of entry, investigators said.

The Clinton administration is reported to have only adopted one of its proposals.

Government officials said the FBI had been conducting electronic surveillance of a mosque in Brooklyn frequented by Afghans in 1999 after developing information from the investigation of the U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa.

Sources said the FBI had "hours" of taped conversations between people associated with the unidentified mosque and suspected terrorist leaders. But despite the potential intelligence value of the intercepted communications, stacks of tapes languished on the shelves at the FBI counter- terrorism center in downtown Manhattan because there were not enough translators.

The call for more translators that our FBI and CIA went unheeded.

The problem of the lack of capable translators persisted right up to the 9/11 attacks and has been frequently cited as a key weakness.

The FBI reported to Congress in January 2002, two years after the Clarke memo to Berger, that it had backlogs of "thousands of unreviewed and untranslated materials."

This is not acceptable!

Berger, who stepped down as an adviser to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry’s campaign last week, has called the removal of the National Archives documents an honest mistake. He said he was taking notes to prepare for testimony before the 9/11 commission.

This man committed treason and was trying to cover his rear or someone else's.

Congressional committees are investigating whether Berger's real interest may have been handwritten notes on the margins of each copy of the report. Those notes could potentially contain responses from Berger and other top Clinton aides to the memo's recommendations.

It turns out that ex-Kerry foreign-policy adviser Sandy Berger mishandled classified documents before. The most pressing questions centered on the few pages that might have been left out - after disappearing down the pants of the top Clinton aide.

Mr. Berger admitted he smuggled some papers out of the Archives building while "inadvertently" removing others.

He claims he returned most of the materials when questioned by investigators last year, but several documents have disappeared entirely, leading House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) to term the situation a "national-security crisis."

This speaks volumes for the shape our country is in. What happened to these documents after they were put "inadvertently" in Mr. Berger’s pants, socks, shirt and leather portfolio briefcase he had with him?

In addition to numerous memos, those documents reportedly included several draft versions of a report critical of the Clinton administration’s counterterrorism efforts surrounding the millennium celebrations of Jan. 1, 2000. When confronted by investigators, Mr. Berger says he promptly returned all the documents he could find, though some apparently were discarded - again, "inadvertently".

And what of the classified documents he accidentally removed and subsequently lost? While some might be willing to believe he let one copy of the millennium terror report fall unnoticed into his portfolio, how could he mistakenly remove multiple draft copies of the same report over a one-month period? Who were they given to? Who ordered them destroyed (if indeed, they were destroyed and not passed on? Any clue?

His treasonous actions have left many in Washington with lingering questions.

Why, for instance, would Mr. Berger go to such lengths merely to sneak his own notes from the reading room? Archives workers who bent the rules by letting him bring his leather portfolio to the table - something that’s normally forbidden with presidential papers - would surely have been lenient when reviewing the notes he was making.

But his detractors remember something more sinister about his years in the Clinton White House: Even then he was manipulating classified information to achieve political goals.

"This is the second time now that we have a documented case of Berger mishandling classified information," said Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), recalling a 1999 incident that led him to take to the floor of the House to criticize "the outrageous and curious behavior of our so-called national security adviser."

"As a member of the Cox Committee charged with investigating the transfer of high-tech secrets to China during the Clinton administration, in January 1999 Rep. Weldon sent an advance copy of the committee’s report to Mr. Berger for his review. After seven months of closed-door, bipartisan hearings with no leaks to the press, the committee of five Republicans and four Democrats had unanimously recommended some three dozen steps that should be taken to protect America’s national security."

Within days, however, "Sandy Berger issued a statement to selected members of the media putting the White House spin on what was still a classified document," congressman Weldon recalled. "He did that without asking any member of the committee. Before the CIA director could even read our report, Berger was already spinning. That sets the pattern for what may have occurred" in the Archives case, Rep. Weldon believes.

"There’s no way that any human being would put information in their socks unless they were trying desperately to hide something."

"The question is, for what reason? We don’t know for sure what documents are missing, and we may never know. But obviously there was something there that bothered him dramatically."