 “Hmmm, I Wonder if I left those codes at Mickey D’s”
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TOWARDS the end of the Clinton administration the US would have been unable to launch an instant nuclear strike because the President had lost the secret codes.
The extraordinary lapse is described in a book by General Hugh Shelton, the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirming an earlier account that was dismissed at the time as too outlandish to be credible. Without the codes it would have been impossible to begin the launch sequence for a retaliatory or pre-emptive nuclear strike, an officer formerly in charge of the President’s “nuclear football” told The Times yesterday. “The codes were actually missing for months. This is a big deal – a gargantuan deal,” General Shelton writes in Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior.
In what the general describes as a comedy of errors, a Pentagon aide assigned to visit the White House to check on the code card every month was twice rebuffed with the explanation that the President was not to be disturbed. When the time came to replace one set of codes with another, “we learnt that the aide had no idea where the old ones were because they had been missing for months”, the general writes.
According to General Shelton’s account, the episode took place during 2000. However, Robert “Buzz” Patterson, a retired air force colonel who was assigned to carry the “nuclear football” for Mr Clinton until late 1998 and who first reported the loss of the codes, said that he discovered they were missing on January 21, 1998. “When I asked President Clinton at the time when he recalled last seeing the codes, he said he didn’t know,” Colonel Patterson said.
“I said, ‘Days?’ He said, ‘I don’t know’. Weeks? ‘Possibly’. Months? ‘Possibly’.”
Mr Clinton normally kept the codes, printed on a laminated piece of card, “rubber-banded to his credit cards” in a trouser pocket, Colonel Patterson said.
It was probably on the cigar.
#17 — you are correct that a military guy carries the actual “football”, but I believe that the President has to enter the actuall codes.
You would not want both the football and the codes to be carried by a single military “lacky” —
that’s not all Clinton lost….
>> rwest said, on October 22nd, 2010 at 2:00 pm
>> #17 — you are correct that a military guy carries the actual “football”, but I believe that the President has to enter the actuall codes.
You could be right but this story has a stink about it.
Are we supposed to believe that the codes got lost in the sofa cushions and nobody was sent to rifle through the apartment for them?
I could easily believe codes may have been misplaced briefly or left behind on a trip, but gone for MONTHS? The president has a gigantic staff who could work 24/7 to fix an issue like this. Or just get new codes.
I still think this story needs a B.S. meter.
Remember how the Bush administration lied and claimed that Clinton staff stole all the “Ws” off the Whitehouse computer keyboards?
This story has that same stink.
All bullshit to sell a book.
Clinton’s launch code was “bukkake”.
If the story is true it’s not so worrying that the President lost the codes and told no one,, but more so that there is no system in place to prevent this.
So just don’t buy they they hand you a card and that’s it.
I also don’t believe the president carries credit cards on him. I’m sure he also has the keys to the white house front door on a PBR bottle opener key chain.
“I’m sure he also has the keys to the white house front door on a PBR bottle opener key chain.” Only the southern presidents. The northerners keep them on a corkscrew for the wine bottles. Unless they are really young presidents, boones farm has a screw top.
And O’Donnel and Angel are condemned as incompetent…
Prez Obama need not worry, he still is the worst President this country as ever had…Carter the next…Bill is somewhere on the list, after Hoover.
#28 Its Government…the same folks who will soon be running your health care.
Private enterprise allows travel anywhere on the globe, and the use of a plastic card to draw money out of a bank account…without error. AND replace that card if lost…in seconds…
But the President goes for months unable to replace the gizmo…because its incompetent Government that’s in charge.
This illustrates the wisdom of rolling back government…the money saved will be astronomical…
Return everything but the military back to the states…We will have huge budget surpluses…
Alfie, Obama is way smarter than you are. Dubya spent most of his administration working on his Alfred E. Neuman impersonation, and the rest developing his Alfred Persson peudonym.
I suppose Monica finally brought them back. Its things like this that make you realize how many dumb **** people we elect to office.
This is the third time this has been published, but for some reason it gets noticed a bit more now. Does this author have a better publicist or something?
I always liked Clinton. Killing millions of people just wasn’t on his mind. Now, a person like Cheney…
On the other hand, Clinton doesn’t seem to care if Haitians can’t take care of themselves. Carter would seem to care more about that sort of thing.
Why don’t they do it like we did in the military and make it a pair of metal dog tags, you have to wear 24/7?
I mean yeah their are work around, but these are keys to the most powerful weapons in the world, leaving them on a piece of paper seems kind of dumb.
#33 – It’s true! Unlike other presidents who foolishly participated in the decision-making process, Obama has figured out that, others being much more qualified than him, he might as well let them decide on his new policies and write his important speeches.
This frees him up for worthwhile activities like golfing and taking his presidential motorcade to the ice cream parlor. All he needs to do is read the script every now and then to keep things ticking over and make it look like he’s in charge.
Genius! Smartest president EV-ARR!!!11!1!
How is this a “big deal”? So, the US would not have been able to launch a retaliatory strike of its more than 3,000 nuclear warheads that would have destroyed all life on earth. We wouldn’t even be having this debate if they were used.
#36 Yeah, Carter see business opportunities in places like Haiti.
#38 Don’t forget taping with the Mythbusters.