RedState columnist and author Buzz Patterson knows a thing or two about presidential security and flight operations.
After all, he served 20 years on active duty as an Air Force pilot, received the Air Medal for flying combat support missions into Sarajevo, and from 1996 to 1998 he served as a senior military aide to President Bill Clinton and was put in charge of the nuclear football. Following his WH service, he became a commercial pilot and best-selling author.
He knows a thing or two about what he’s talking about, then, and he’s deeply concerned that top-secret information about President Trump’s early July decoy flight out of Ankara, Turkey, was leaked to the media in August. The president was seen publicly boarding Air Force One, but was then secretly transferred to a different military aircraft due to Iranian threats.
Patterson says we have no business knowing about it:
A retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who carried the nuclear “football” for former President Bill Clinton is sounding the alarm that exposing the vital national security secrets that protected President Trump from a potential attack on Air Force One could put presidents, military personnel and the White House press corps in danger for years to come.
“If somebody leaked it, it was somebody involved in the process, and that scares the hell out of me,” Robert ‘Buzz’ Patterson tells Fox News Digital.
He added that the operation was “brilliant” and wishes he had been part of it, it was so well done.
Buzz Paterson is correct, we don’t need to know these things. Secrecy is needed for protection. Once exposed, it can never be used again.