January 21, 1998: The Washington Post headline
shouted at me. I could read it in the pre-dawn light on our front
porch. Standing there in my underwear, I let out a whoop. I ran up the
stairs to my wife, still in bed. I had snow on my bare feet, but I was
yelling to wake the whole house: They got him! This time, they got him. Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinski. He's going down. Nobody can survive this.
My wife, a Navy captain, thought I'd lost my mind. Alarmed, she shushed me. "Be quiet.
You're waking the whole Academy," she remonstrated. We were living in a large beautiful duplex on the Parade Field at the U.S. Naval Academy. Undeterred, I said: "That's OK, they loathe him, too."
President Bill Clinton was going to be ousted that very day. Or surely that very week, I was positive. Why? Well, I had been a military Top Secret Control Officer. I knew how serious an offense it was to compromise national security -- even on a little Coast Guard cutter in the middle of the Bering Sea.
How much more grave an offense must it be for the Commander-in-Chief to have phone sex with some 21-year old intern on a non-secure telephone line! (I confess, until that week I didn't even know what phone sex was. And I was a sailor.)
Back to the nation's security. The reason I was so certain Clinton would be forced out of office was that his conduct put him in a position to be blackmailed by 20 hostile security services. The government provides the president scrambler telephones so that his conversations cannot be tapped into by enemies. We spend millions providing him with those secure lines of communications. Who might have listened in on Bill and Monica? The Russians, the Chinese, the Iraqis, the Iranians, the Palestinians, the list goes on. He could also have been blackmailed by friendlies.
My wife, a Navy captain, thought I'd lost my mind. Alarmed, she shushed me. "Be quiet.
You're waking the whole Academy," she remonstrated. We were living in a large beautiful duplex on the Parade Field at the U.S. Naval Academy. Undeterred, I said: "That's OK, they loathe him, too."
President Bill Clinton was going to be ousted that very day. Or surely that very week, I was positive. Why? Well, I had been a military Top Secret Control Officer. I knew how serious an offense it was to compromise national security -- even on a little Coast Guard cutter in the middle of the Bering Sea.
How much more grave an offense must it be for the Commander-in-Chief to have phone sex with some 21-year old intern on a non-secure telephone line! (I confess, until that week I didn't even know what phone sex was. And I was a sailor.)
Back to the nation's security. The reason I was so certain Clinton would be forced out of office was that his conduct put him in a position to be blackmailed by 20 hostile security services. The government provides the president scrambler telephones so that his conversations cannot be tapped into by enemies. We spend millions providing him with those secure lines of communications. Who might have listened in on Bill and Monica? The Russians, the Chinese, the Iraqis, the Iranians, the Palestinians, the list goes on. He could also have been blackmailed by friendlies.
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