Doug Ross @ Journal

Dereliction of Duty

I just posted this review to Amazon.

Very disturbing but adds unnecessary speculation

Lt. Col. Buzz Patterson served two years as President Clinton's Senior Military Aide. In that role, he provided logistic support, planned for contingencies, and -- most importantly -- carried the president's emergency satchel, better known as the 'nuclear football'. The football provides the ability to dispatch nuclear weaponry and is inarguably the one item the president should never be without. Patterson's book is shocking, but not without warts of its own.

That Patterson is trustworthy and honest is unquestioned. Those reviewers who claim the information is fabricated need to recognize two simple facts: (a) people who aren't honest don't get 'Yankee White' security clearances, which the Military Aides must have; and (b) someone would have sued for libel had these startling allegations been groundless.

The most shocking allegation relates to Clinton's unwillingness to make a decision while Sandy Berger awaited a 'go' order to launch a major raid on Iraq. His reason? He was too busy -- for several hours -- talking with Vernon Jordan and watching golf. Berger apparently called several times during the window of opportunity, but by the time Clinton got around to calling back, the mission had been aborted.

Other Clinton gaffes: losing the nuclear launch codes (the only time they've ever been irretrievably lost); leaving a meeting -- and the aide with the nuclear football -- behind due to impatience; and his administration's questionable dealings with China that many believe gave it access to the US military's ICBM technology.

In the second part of the book, Patterson calls into question Clinton's 'CNN diplomacy'. As he points out, "from 1946 to 1991, the [US] deployed military troops in eight foreign campaigns. During the Clinton years, we deployed troops to at least 40 separate foreign locations." The classic example was turning tail in Somalia (after preventing the military from deploying its requested weapons systems like AC-130s) sufficiently emboldened one of the instigators that few had heard of before: Osama bin Laden. OBL used America's retreat successfully as a recruiting tool.

Because of Clinton's unwillingness to act decisively, and treating terrorism as a law enforcement problem, Patterson pins 9/11 directly on Clinton. "From 1993 to 2001, Islamic terrorists attacked American targets eight separate times. If there's anything beyond scandal that we should most remember about the Clinton years, this is it: They were the years that terrorists brought their war to the [America]."

And he brings up additional damning evidence: A 1996 Presidential Daily Brief that that referenced a plot to use commercial airliners as weapons. Patterson categorically states that both Clinton and his intelligence leadership knew about the 9/11-style attack five years prior. The administration's constant efforts to run the country based upon poll numbers was the culprit, according to Patterson.

Two nits to pick: there is a fair amount of unsubstantiated innuendo and gossip: were the missing Rose law records really in Hillary's plastic file container that had to travel with her at all times? Was Hillary really a b**ch to the staff? We could have probably done without the speculation. Also - the book was very short - probably worthy of a long magazine article (in "Vanity Fair", perhaps ? :-) instead. Maybe it probably should have been made into a full blown biography of Patterson. Nonetheless it is informative and quite disturbing.

Clinton himself was personally quite likable, Patterson says. But his eight years as Commander-in-Chief were a disaster from the standpoint of foreign relations and national security. Islamic terrorists, North Korea's secret nuclear program, and the Pakistani nuclear parts network all flourished under Clinton's watch. And that truly will be his legacy.