Actually, no, they were not checked because as big and disheveled as Berger is, it would be difficult to hide a hard drive in his socks. But the material is missing nonetheless.

A massive amount of sensitive, national security-related information from the Clinton administration has gone missing from the national archives.

The Inspector General of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) told congressional committee staffers Tuesday that a hard drive containing over a terabyte of information — the equivalent of millions of books–went missing from the NARA facility in College Park, Md., sometime between October 2008 and March 2009.

The Department of Justice and the Secret Service are conducting an investigation, but it’s so far unclear whether the drive was lost as the result of a crime or an accident.

That hard drive includes information on Secret Service operating procedures, event logs, and other “highly sensitive information,” according to the office of Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the ranking member on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The data also includes 100,000 Social Security numbers, including the number of one of Al Gore’s daughters.

According to Issa’s office, the hard drive was in the process of being moved when it somehow disappeared. At least 100 employees, in addition to numerous janitors, interns and visitors, could have accessed the location where the drive was last seen, which, the inspector general told staffers, was located on the way to the restroom.

Makes one wonder about all of those computers in the government. Remember when the nuclear secrets (at Los Alamos) hard drive went missing for years?

Congressional hearings might be a good idea.

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