Oops.

"The football" is a case containing the codes required to launch America's nuclear weapons, and it was carried by a military officer wherever the President of the United States goes.

Inside it is a card containing the actual codes, and called "the biscuit." And according to former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Hugh Shelton, Bill Clinton lost the biscuit for several months while he was president.

Ret. Air Force Lt. Col. Robert Patterson also reported the incident in a book published seven years ago. Patterson, however, dated it in 1998, whereas Shelton reports that it took place in 2000.

It seems that the very morning that the Monica Lewinski story broke, Shelton- then the officer in charge of the football- routinely requested "the biscuit" (then in Clinton's personal possession for some reason) so that it could be switched for a card containing updated codes.

Clinton apparently had misplaced it somewhere in the residence.

This- as Gen. Shelton points out in his book- is not a trivial lapse. But Mr. Clinton has company. A persistent story- which nobody will either confirm or deny- is that Jimmy Carter once sent the biscuit to the cleaners in one of the pockets of his suit.

HT: Drudge