NEW VIEWPOINT ON BERGER SITUATION... DEMS LEAKED IT

Last night on Scarborough Country, MSNBC's political analyst, Lawrence O'Donnell, brought up an interesting perspective that while majority of the media (e.g. NY Times, Washington Post) was bashing the Republicans on overblowing the case and questioning the timing of the leak he believed it was the Kerry camp.

O‘DONNELL: If you have worked in campaigns, you know that, when you get a bomb that you can throw at the other side, you save it until October. You save it as late as possible.

Imagine, for example, even this story breaking a week later, breaking the day John Kerry was to give his speech in Boston. That is exactly what the Kerry campaign didn‘t want. I think, when we get the journalistic autopsy on this eventually, what you are going to find is Sandy Berger very slowly and very reluctantly and very, very recently told the Kerry campaign that he was being investigated by the FBI.

The Kerry campaign immediately said to him, you have got to make that public right away and we cannot let you go forward without making that public. He makes it public. You watch what happens to the story in 12 hours, and you cut him loose. And you want that to happen as soon as possible. You want it to happen this week, rather than next week. You want it to happen in July, rather than October.

All the incentive to push this story out and get it done with now comes from the Kerry campaign. The Bush campaign‘s incentive would be exactly the opposite.