Not in Command
SCHEMMER, BENJAMIN
Not in Command Bill Clinton's military aide tells all. BY BENJAMIN SCHEMMER Bill Clinton faces some artful dodging if his memoir, due this fall from Random House, is to answer the charges in...
...Clinton's responses were "I'll call Berger when I get a chance" and "Tell Berger that I'll give him a call on my way back to the White House...
...BY BENJAMIN SCHEMMER Bill Clinton faces some artful dodging if his memoir, due this fall from Random House, is to answer the charges in Dereliction of Duty, a compelling account of the White House by Clinton's senior military aide from May 1996 to May 1998...
...And, in Clinton's own pen, "He is a fine man...
...No president in American history traveled more...
...A more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger tone, and the allowing of a few good qualities to Clinton, might have made Dereliction of Duty more persuasive—and thus even more devastating...
...The president eventually called back...
...Military Airlift Command flew 144 cargo missions and 110 aerial refueling missions to support them...
...Finally, the president accepted Berger's call...
...Benjamin Schemmer is the author of No Room For Error and The Raid...
...Berger called twice more...
...He was eyeballing my wife as though she had just entered a singles bar...
...Clinton's disdain of the military permeates this book, as does Hillary Clinton's, whose "harsh, difficult, and unpredictable" manner and "rudeness" included "every vulgar word you've ever heard...
...Clifton stayed on to serve Lyndon Johnson from 1963 to 1965...
...But Clifton's The Memories, 19611963, JFK was essentially a nostalgic, photographic history of the social environment in the Kennedy White House...
...For almost twenty-five years, he edited Armed Forces Journal International and was editor in chief of Strategic Review...
...One trip to southern Asia in 2000, after Patterson left the White House, required 354 scheduled airlift missions, enough to move two Army divisions with all their supplies and equipment...
...There was discussion, there were pauses— and no decision...
...Early in 1998, he lost the card containing the nuclear-launch codes, which he usually bound with rubber bands to credit cards in his pants pockets...
...a twenty-page, boilerplate chronology of Clinton's foreign policy that appears as one appendix...
...Berger was forced to wait...
...As they were ushered into the Oval Office, "I caught a glance at President Clinton—and I couldn't believe it...
...I'll track it down, guys," he promised his aides...
...Those pages reproduce the officer-performance reports that the president gave Patterson during his tour: "America's finest, a standout leader," "trusted advisor and agent," "Masterful planner," "diplomatic, thorough, and discerning...
...Only one other military aide in recent history has written about his work in the White House...
...On Patterson's last trip to Africa with Clinton in 1998, "The accompanying staff totaled 1,302 federal officials...
...We "studied" the issue until it was too late...
...Patterson, a dedicated officer and the son of a major general who had commanded the Air Force's special operations forces, considered doing so as well: "I did not want to have to shake the president's hand...
...leaving our posts simultaneously in disgust...
...The window of opportunity was closing fast...
...Patterson's firsthand narrative is not without flaws...
...But the "Clinton administration didn't just visit a foreign country...
...By the time Clinton climbed into his limousine, "we'd missed our opportunity," Patterson mourns...
...The president was watching golf...
...but he agreed to the ceremony to give his wife and parents the chance to come to the White House as Clinton presented him with the Defense Superior Service Medal...
...That was Chester V "Ted" Clifton Jr., President Kennedy's senior military aide...
...Patterson contends this "lost bin Laden hit typified the Clinton administration's ambivalent, indecisive way of dealing with terrorism," which amounted to "gross negligence...
...Months before he left the White House, Patterson "had become completely dejected...
...His potential is great...
...One of the aides "refused his Oval Office farewell from the president...
...We didn't pull the trigger...
...In 1998, for instance, a watch officer in the White House situation room notified national security adviser Sandy Berger that Osama bin Laden had been located and was vulnerable for two hours to an attack by Tomahawk cruise missiles...
...The book is too short, massively cut down from a longer manuscript by the publisher, and then bulked up again with filler: an unnecessary and almost hysterical anti-Clinton foreword by one of the publisher's staff...
...For about an hour Berger couldn't get the president on the line...
...During 1995 and 1996, the Clintons invited at least 477 guests to accompany them (and that isn't counting staff, family members, and the press...
...His work was outstanding...
...Patterson's Dereliction of Duty, by contrast, is all substance—and that substance forms a compelling indictment of Bill Clinton as America's commander in chief...
...Berger tried again and again...
...In another example, Patterson relates how in September 1996 the president, watching a golf tournament in Manas-sas, Virginia, refused to take three urgent phone calls from the White House...
...a chapter excerpted from Caspar Weinberger's 2001 book, In the Arena: A Memoir of the 20th Century, that appears as yet another appendix...
...It was never found...
...Sandy Berger needed a decision on launching the airstrike against Iraq that Clinton had warned of two days earlier when he told a California audience, "action is imminent...
...Patterson has not opened the box that he put his medal in upon receiving it...
...But Clinton's casual approach to his responsibilities as commander in chief was far worse...
...he made 133 trips to 74 foreign countries (more than Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon combined...
...The premier symbol of American military prowess, Air Force One, became Clinton's favorite toy...
...Pilots were in their cockpits, but Clinton refused to take Berger's call, irritated his hobnobbing in the VIP tent had been interrupted...
...it invaded...
...Four pages of this extraneous matter, however, are helpful—and will sorely challenge anyone to refute Patterson's view of Clinton's presidency...
...Though the president was always accompanied by military aides and the Secret Service, he was somehow unavailable...
...At one point, all five of Clinton's military aides even discussed "resigning en masse...
...Lieutenant Colonel Robert "Buzz" Patterson was a battle-tested pilot who flew in Grenada, Somalia, Haiti, Rwanda, and Bosnia, but his time with Clinton so disillusioned him, he turned down a promotion and retired after twenty years of service...
...Amazingly," Patterson writes, President Clinton was not available...
...He was still indecisive...
Vol. 8 • April 2003 • No. 31
