President Clinton lost nuclear codes while in office, new book claims
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton lost the card bearing the codes needed to launch a nuclear attack while in office, according to a former top military officer.
Gen. Hugh Shelton, who served under Clinton as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the “biscuit” — as it is known — was missing for months, ABC News reported.
Shelton tells the story in his memoir, “Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior,” although Ret. Air Force Lt. Col Robert Patterson previously told a similar story in his book
“He thought he just placed them upstairs,” Patterson wrote. “We called upstairs, we started a search around the White House for the codes, and he finally confessed that he in fact misplaced them. He couldn’t recall when he had last seen them.”
Patterson said Clinton lost the biscuit in 1998, but Shelton recalls it going missing in 2000.
“At one point during the Clinton administration,” Shelton wrote, “the codes were actually missing for months. That’s a big deal — a gargantuan deal.”
White House spokesman Joe Lockhart confessed in 1999 that Clinton had once left a NATO summit in such haste that he left behind his briefcase which contained the codes.
There have long been rumors that former President Jimmy Carter left the card in a suit which was sent to the dry cleaners. That story has never been confirmed or denied.
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