Doc who 'diagnosed' Christie also heard Clinton's anguished cry after Lewinsky scandal broke

By Carol Felsenthal - 02/11/13 10:05 AM ET

Retired Navy Rear Adm. Connie Mariano — the former White House doctor who now lives in Arizona and popped in the news last week when she offered a long-distance diagnosis of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — was also the first person to see Bill Clinton on the morning of Jan. 21, 1998, when The Washington Post broke the Monica Lewinsky story. (Mariano served in the Clinton White House for eight years and briefly in the White Houses of both Bushes.)

Bill Clinton, according to an insider I interviewed for my book on Bill Clinton’s post presidency, saw Mariano as a wise, sympathetic ear. (She apparently served him well and counseled him successfully on losing weight.)

Christie was furious that Mariano had opined on CNN that Christie was a “time bomb waiting to happen,” especially if he were to assume the stressful job of president, and that his morbid obesity could kill him.

Christie called her “a hack” who had never met him, much less examined him or reviewed his medical and family history; a busybody seeking her “five minutes on TV,” whose words scared his children (“My children saw that"); and he said she should just “shut up.”

When I saw the news, I went back to my notes to look up the name Connie Mariano. She appeared mostly in a transcript of an interview I did with Lt. Col. Robert Patterson, then chief White House military aide to Clinton (retired from the Air Force in 2001).

Patterson told me in January 2007 that he was the first person on Clinton’s schedule that morning of Jan. 21.

“My meeting with him was to brief him on the new nuclear codes. … I saw the distress on his face. He looked like he had been up all night. … His eyes were bloodshot; he was really flushed. … You could tell he was just shocked; he’d been discovered and he was having to face up to the fact that he’d really screwed up.”

After leaving the president, Patterson told me, “I went to the … doctor’s office which is underneath the residence on the first floor of the White House. … I swung in there to say hi to the doctor and the nurses [all military] who I was very good friends with, and he came in a little bit later and told them basically he was not capable of that, he could not do that. … I happened to be in the outer office with the nurses and heard the conversation.”

When I asked Patterson why Clinton would tell that to Mariano, Patterson replied, “He had a very close relationship with her; she was his chief doctor.” Clinton wrote the forward to Mariano’s 2010 memoir The White House Doctor.

No fan of Clinton, Patterson also told me that he believes that Clinton, “completely distracted” by the growing scandal, was “responsible for 9/11” and he wrote a book, published in 2004, titled Dereliction of Duty: Eyewitness Account of How Bill Clinton Compromised America's National Security.