BILL Clinton managed to do the one thing US presidents should never do - lose the nuclear launch codes.
A general who served under Mr Clinton as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff claims in a new book that the card bearing the top secret codes were missing for several months during 2000.
"At one point during the Clinton administration the codes were actually missing for months. That's a big deal - a gargantuan deal," General Hugh Shelton says in his memoir, Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior.
Another senior military firgure linked to the Clinton administration, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Patterson, claims in another book that the President's memory lapse caused a huge panic in the White House.
"He thought he just placed them upstairs," Lieutenant Colonel Patterson said.
"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."
It is unclear if the codes were ever found.
The card containing the launch codes is supposed to be kept close at hand at all times.
Before a president can launch a nuclear attack, he has to input the codes to arm the warheads.
White House spokesman Joe Lockhart confessed in 1999 that Mr Clinton had once left a NATO summit in such haste that he left behind his briefcase that contained the codes.
There have long been rumours that former President Jimmy Carter left the card in a suit which was sent to the dry cleaners. That story has never been confirmed or denied.
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