Ol' Slick William...Lost the 'Biscuit"

[PegLeg45]

This in from the "You gotta be sh!tting me, Pyle" files:

Bill Clinton 'lost vital White House nuclear codes'

For several months during Bill Clinton's administration, a former top military officer says the White House lost the card with a set of numbers for opening the briefcase containing the codes for a nuclear attack.

Gen Hugh Shelton, who was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, said in his new memoir, "Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior" that "the codes were actually missing for months. That's a big deal -- a gargantuan deal."

A similar claim was made by Lt Col Robert Patterson, a former aide, in a book published seven years ago. He was one of the men who carried the briefcase, known as the "football", and he said that the morning after the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke that he made a routine request of the president to present the card so that he could provide an updated version.
"He thought he just placed them upstairs," Lt Col Patterson recalled. "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."

He said the President lost the card holding the codes, which is known as the biscuit, in 1998, but according to Gen Shelton, the card went missing in 2000.

Former president Jimmy Carter was rumoured to have once left the '"biscuit" in a suit that was sent to the dry cleaners.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8077326/Bill-Clinton-lost-vital-White-House-nuclear-codes.html

      

[rat31465]

Why is it that this news of Slick Williy doesn't surprise me even a little bit? 

I'm actually surprised that I am not surprised.

[JC5123]

This is the problem with electing lawyers with no military record. They have no concept of what opsec REALLY means.

[Ichiban]

And it probably would have stayed lost if they hadn't gotten their hands on a certain blue dress.   

[Solus]

This is the problem with electing lawyers with no military record. They have no concept of what opsec REALLY means.

Half the officers on active duty are (well, were...circa 1968) clueless too.

Was assigned to a Div. G2 section and was getting stuff set up in the G3 Div. War Room.   In full view was a map of where all the units in the Div were to deploy in the SHTF as a foreign national cleaning lady swept and dusted the room. 

I mentoned it to the G3 officer present and he told me not to worry about it, that she is in the room all the time....sigh..

Lots of things I might not get to worried about, but where I'm gonna be hiding when the bombs start to fall isn't one of them..

Mentioned it to the G3 and he went ballistic.  Spent months determining what may possibly have been compromised and redoing it all.  I don't think the officers involved felt it was such a big deal...

[Sponsor]

[tombogan03884]

 When I was in the National Guard, our Battery was "Special weapons" capable.
I walked into my arms room one day and found that my Lt. had left the code books, open, on top of my safe.
He was in the Co's office having lunch and batting the breeze. I could have ended his career then and there, but he was a good guy, so I asked him to come help me with a "technical problem".
He almost messed himself when I told him the "problem"