ANNETTE WITHERIDGE IN
NEW YORK
FORMER United States president, Bill Clinton, lost the codes that
activate an American nuclear attack on the day his affair with White
House intern Monica Lewinsky became public, a new book alleges.
Mr Clinton also refused to sanction an Iraqi air strike because he was
too busy watching golf - and missed an opportunity to kill Osama bin
Laden because he was "unavailable" for two hours.
Conspiracy theorists and far right "Bubba Bashers" - as die-hard Clinton
foes are known - have long blamed the philandering former commander-in-
chief for leaving the US open to terrorist attacks.
The new revelations, however, come from Robert "Buzz" Patterson, a
former lieutenant colonel who carried the attaché case containing the
country’s Doomsday apparatus for two years.
Mr Patterson claims he was not surprised Mr Clinton lost the secret code
because he "normally kept the world’s most sensitive document
rubber-banded to his credit cards in his pants pocket".
In Dereliction of Duty: The Eyewitness Account of How Bill Clinton
Compromised America’s National Security, Mr Patterson writes: "In my
humble opinion Bill Clinton should have been impeached for losing the
nuclear codes. It was a spectacular violation of our national security
laws and a cavalier betrayal of the public trust."
The book has shot onto the Amazon.com best-seller list. Mr Patterson,
now a regular war commentator on television, carried the 45lb Doomsday
briefcase and accompanied Mr Clinton everywhere from 1996 to 1998.
He claims Mr Clinton treated the military with contempt and that
Pentagon chiefs were forced to call off a cruise missile attack on bin
Laden because the president was unavailable for two critical hours.
When Mr Clinton finally re-emerged, Mr Patterson charges, he waffled
until it was too late to hit the cave-dwelling terrorist. He also
charges that when the military suggested an Iraqi air strike in 1996 Mr
Clinton was too distracted watching golf on television to respond.
The book’s allegations are hotly denied by Clinton aides, who called it
the latest sally by a "right-wing publisher". The former national
security advisor, Sandy Berger, said: "At no time during my years at the
White House was I unable to reach Mr Clinton for timely decisions on
military action or national security. The two incidents described in
this book that involve me, regarding Iraq and bin Laden, simply are
false." But the 47-year-old author defends his story saying: "I’ve spent
the past five years mulling it over, whether to write this book.
"Lying was just second nature to Clinton. His lies were so smooth, so
carefully crafted and so larger than life."
Mr Patterson has stopped short of blaming Mr Clinton for the 3,000
deaths on 11 September but extreme right-wingers have not. A 1994
article by a conservative journalist claimed Mr Clinton rewarded an
Arkansas state trooper with the job of carrying the nuclear attaché case
in exchange for keeping quiet about his dalliances.
The officer "had the tendency to break down and cry in stressful
situations" it was claimed.
Then there was the occasion Mr Clinton did launch an attack on bin
Laden. The Lewinsky scandal was at its height when he announced he had
bombed an al-Qaeda training camp and a chemical weapons plant. That
target was later described as an aspirin factory.