We should be seeing a perp walk, not hearing sniffles about "quee r timing"

Americans have a traditional and healthy distrust of government. This distrust demands openness in the government's operations, so political consensus can be achieved and the will of the governed can operate.

One lonely area where we allow the government to be "closed" as it were, is in the area of national security. We allow our government to hold certain kinds of information secret because broad knowledge of that information can put us, the governed, in danger. We allow secrets to be kept from the majority of us for our benefit. This trust is tenuous. The makers and
keepers of these secrets have a unique duty to understand and earn the trust that allows us to keep them in the first place. A violation of this trust can shake the government to its foundations.

We cannot afford any incidents that are or would reasonably be construed to be politically motivated manipulation of state secrets.

The theft and destruction of these documents appears then to be two crimes: the theft and destruction of the documents per se, and the apparent manipulation of state secrets to achieve a political advantage.

The former simply makes us shrug and wonder idly whether Mr Berger's security clearance will be merely suspended, or fully withdrawn for cause; the latter should outrage us, regardless of our political preferences, for undermining the trust we place in our government to maintain the firewall between domestic party politics and national security.

We should be seeing his perp walk instead of an impromptu press conference, and we should be hearing ringing condemnation from his former boss instead of suggestions of suspicious timing of a leak.