Fox News star Glenn Beck has admitted what we reported on Wednesday: that he lied when he stood at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial Saturday during his “Restoring Honor” rally and said he had held George Washington’s first inaugural address in his hands during a VIP visit to the National Archives. During his show yesterday, Beck laughed off playing loose with the facts, saying that he thought describing the actual details of his visit to the Archives would be “too much useless information” and of course, mess up the flow of his speech. But he did concede, “They got me.”
And then Beck did it again. He blamed Sandy Berger for his inability to fondle the rare inaugural address. Berger was the former Clinton administration national security adviser who pleaded guilty to taking classified documents out of the Archives and destroying them in 2003. Beck’s charge that Berger’s actions are the reason he couldn’t touch a rare and priceless 220-year-old historic document is a stretch. After all, the documents Berger swiped (related to the Clinton White House’s terrorism policy) were not rare, nor were they likely to disintegrate upon touch. Researchers at the Archive (reporters, authors, historians, hobbyists) routinely handle actual documents in the vast collection—but not rare items, such as Washington’s address. And, of course, the Archives did not wait until 2003 and the Berger affair to implement stringent, no-touch rules for its most precious documents.
Still, Beck came clean (for a change) on the main charge.
