Buzz Patterson
@BuzzPatterson
Tonight’s Buzz’s Bedtime Stories is an unfortunate tale with a horrible ending
(A thread. 1 of 2)
As most of you know, I carried the nuclear football and lived in the White House during the Clinton administration. In the evening, everything wound down in the building with only essential personnel around (Secret Service, NSC, the doctor and nurses, the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, and me).
The evenings are often boring and I normally hung out in my office/bedroom, or walked around, visiting folks. The Secret Service guys and girls, the medical unit, and the NSC staffers were my sanity, after being around the Clintons during the day.
On this particular night, I was having a cup of coffee, chatting with the NSC watch officers watching TV, and talking about missions they were tracking. The NSC is largely a team comprised of military officers, intelligence staffers, and analysts. While I’m sitting there shooting the sh*t, a call comes in.
We, the US, have Osama bin Laden in our sights in Afghanistan. We had military and CIA assets surrounding bin Laden’s camp and we were ready to pull the trigger to kill the terrorist. Sandy Berger, the NSC advisor, was on the horn asking us to get Clinton on the line in the residence and get the approval. (Berger would later become famous for stealing classified documents from the National Archives and sticking them in his pants).
We only had a few hours during the night in Afghanistan or we’d have to scrub the mission. This was the fall of 1997 (the timing is hugely important).
(Continued)…