Democrats clearly weren't buying Santorum's line. In a book-signing appearance in Denver, where he was promoting his new autobiography, "My Life," the former president defended his former national security advisor. "We were all laughing about it," Clinton said, according to the Denver Post. "People who don't know [Berger] might find it hard to believe. But ... all of us who've been in his office have always found him buried beneath papers." Clinton added that he'd known of the FBI probe for months and said, "I wish I knew who leaked it. It's interesting timing."

Lanny Davis, a former Clinton White House deputy legal counsel, also ridiculed the allegations. "We're making progress up the anatomy. They started with socks," he said, referring to an erroneous CNN report that Berger had ferried away documents in his socks. "Now they're at the underwear. We're going to get to the jacket pockets soon, which from what I understand, is the right place." Unlike Santorum, Davis said he saw nothing coincidental about the timing of the anonymous leak to the press about Berger. "I think this 9/11 commission underlies the polling numbers that the Bush White House is worrying about most of all -- that he's not going to be seen as the best person to fight Osama bin Laden. This election is about 9/11 and people being terrified. This story about Sandy Berger is a surrogate for them reviving the notion that you can't trust the Democrats on terrorism."

The prospect of next week's Democratic convention in Boston formally nominating Kerry may have also motivated the leak, Davis said: "It's a week before the Democratic convention, and they know Kerry will get a bounce. They're doing everything they can to try to undermine that bounce."

On the Senate floor, meanwhile, Sen. Kit Bond, a Missouri Republican, took up the case against Joseph Wilson in a speech Wednesday. As a member of the intelligence committee, Bond joined the panel's chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, in filing additional views to the Senate report. Those comments charge Wilson had lied in public statements when he claimed his wife, Central Intelligence Agency operative Valerie Plame, was not responsible for the CIA's decision to send Wilson to Niger in 2002 to investigate the claims of British intelligence that Iraq was seeking to purchase uranium "yellowcake" for use in building nuclear weapons.

The committee's bipartisan findings section said that "interviews and documents provided to the committee indicate" that Plame "suggested his name for the trip." But the Republican senators went further, stating her role as central and undisputed. Wilson has denied this characterization of his wife's involvement and has said it is irrelevant to the central issue of Bush's discredited claim in his 2003 State of the Union address that "British intelligence has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" and to the legal case being pressed by a special prosecutor against any leaker of her identity as a covert operative. (Wilson has responded to the accusations with a letter of rebuttal.)

Still, Republicans have seized on the issue in an effort to discredit Wilson, who has also informally advised Kerry. Instantly, conservative media and pundits have cranked up a howling storm against him. The RNC has blasted e-mails round the clock for more than a week to the press corps and Republican supporters. In its face, the committee's Democratic members have remained muted. They pointedly declined to join their Republican counterparts in concluding that Plame in fact did recommend her husband for the trip. But neither have they publicly defended Wilson. "We were agnostic" on Wilson, intelligence panel member Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., said in an interview Wednesday. Nonetheless, he said the Republican conclusion about her role "should have been kept out of the report" as irrelevant.

After his energetic denunciation of Wilson on the Senate floor Wednesday, Bond crowed in an interview that Wilson "has been totally debunked." According to the Senate report, Wilson reported back from his trip to Niger that an Iraqi delegation had approached the country's then-prime minister in 1999 with an overture that the prime minister interpreted as a desire to purchase uranium. Although no transaction took place, Bond said Wilson had in fact corroborated Bush's assertion in the State of the Union address, although the Senate report also found the evidence was shaky, the CIA has been far more skeptical than British intelligence, and the White House has admitted that Bush should not have used the information in his address. The CIA in recent days has told CNN and the Los Angeles Times that Wilson's wife was not involved in the decision to send him to Niger -- and the CIA has also confirmed that for Salon. But Bond insisted that Democrats "are the ones who are misusing intelligence to embarrass the president. And we just blew a major hole in their whole thesis."

Wilson had made repeated public denials that his wife was behind his Niger trip, which Republicans pounced on. Last year, an unidentified administration official disclosed Plame's status as a covert CIA officer to conservative columnist Robert Novak, in what Wilson has claimed was retaliation for his speaking out about his trip to Niger. Depending on the circumstances, it can be a felony to blow the cover of a covert CIA operative, and a Justice Department special prosecutor has been looking into whether anyone in the Bush administration broke the law by leaking Plame's name. The Republican effort to dent Wilson's credibility may be a preemptive strike in the event of indictments.

For his part, Berger has admitted to being "sloppy" with the classified copies of the documents, which were written by former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke to describe the administration's response to a failed al-Qaida plot to bomb the Los Angeles airport during millennial celebrations in 1999. Berger told the FBI he may have inadvertently discarded some of the copies. He did not, however, remove any original documents, but only copies, his lawyer has said.

But Republicans have attempted to downplay the disclosure of Plame's covert status, even suggesting she had it coming because, in their view, she and Wilson were working to damage the president politically. Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, told the Washington Times last October that Plame's outing was a "minor" event. On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal editorialized that the prosecutor in the case "should close up shop." That forgiving attitude toward the senior administration officials who outed Plame evaporates when Republicans discuss Berger, who as national security advisor had always maintained good personal relations with congressional Republicans, despite such policy differences as over whether American should have led the NATO war in Kosovo.

"Sandy Berger, we all know him, we've worked with him. But he has now been charged with taking highly classified documents, stuffing them in his trousers, using them for the Kerry campaign, and then admitting to destroying those documents. He says he was sloppy," Sen. Smith said at Tuesday's news conference, himself making several sloppy allegations.

But Berger hasn't been charged with any crime, and it is highly doubtful that he will be. Whether Valerie Plame did or did not have anything to do with Wilson's Niger mission happens to be legally beside the point; it is simply a Republican talking point, of no bearing to the special prosecutor, who continues his work. These attacks on two Democratic national security figures can be best understood as reflecting the Republican fear of the 9/11 commission report. And with its release, these controversies are likely to recede as sideshows.

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