WASHINGTON, July 21 (AFP) - President George W. Bush's reelection campaign said Wednesday that Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry should come clean about whether he benefitted from classified documents removed from a US government archive by one of his advisors.
The Bush camp ratcheted up pressure on Kerry a day after former national security advisor Sandy Berger admitted he had illegally removed classified documents from the National Archives before testifying to a commission probing the September 11, 2001 attacks.
"Why would the (Kerry) campaign launch arbitrary attacks instead of offering clear assurance to the American people that the Kerry campaign did not benefit from classified documents that were removed from the National Archives by one of their advisors, Sandy Berger now subject to a criminal investigation," asked Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman.
Mehlman spoke to reporters on a conference call in which he explained how the Bush team would be stepping up its campaign against Kerry during the Democratic National Convention in Boston next week.
Berger's admission that he removed documents from the archive forced him to step down as a key foreign policy advisor to Kerry on Tuesday.
Press reports said Berger's actions have likely scotched his chances of a senior position in a potential Kerry administration.
The seasoned foreign policy supremo, who is now under investigation by the Justice Department, said he acted inadvertently when he took the sensitive papers last year before testifying to the 9/11 commission in March on behalf of the former Clinton administration.
"I made an honest mistake. It's one I deeply regret," Berger told reporters outside his Washington office late Tuesday.
Berger's mea culpa has filled the US airwaves and he stepped down as a Kerry advisor under sustained Republican criticism of his actions, Democrats have countered by charging that a leak was orchestrated to smear the Kerry campaign.
Democrats have also charged the revelations were leaked in a bid to deflect media attention away from the 9/11 commission's findings. The panel is due to issue a long awaited report Thursday into how the Clinton and Bush administrations handled intelligence and responded to terror threats.
House Speaker Dennis Hastert has suggested Berger was caught "pilfering" in a bid to keep potentially damaging information from the 9/11 panel, but a Berger aide told AFP the panel had reviewed the documents removed by Berger and that they have been widely circulated.
Berger's former boss, president Clinton, jumped to his defense Wednesday.
"I believe his explanation. He did a fabulous job against terrorism. All of those records were documented, and the ones in question involved what we did leading up to the Millennium, where we had no terrorist incidents and prevented a lot of them," Clinton told CNN.
The one time national security advisor's lawyer, Lanny Breuer, told CNN the Kerry campaign has no link whatsoever to Berger's actions.
"The John Kerry campaign has absolutely nothing to do with this incident," Breuer stressed.
"And it's really sad, in my view, ... that a man of Sandy Berger's stature, and a man who has so selflessly devoted his life to the betterment of the United States' security and safety, is being accused of such things, for purely partisan purposes, days before the 9/11 commission report is coming out," Breuer added.