That Time the Russian President Was Caught Wandering the Streets of DC Drunk and Half Naked
It happened in the very early hours of September 16, 1994, shortly after modern Russia’s first elected president, Boris Yeltsin, who was then on an official state visit to meet with Bill Clinton, snuck out of his hotel room to try and get his hands on a nice, greasy American pizza.
The incident wasn’t made public until nearly 15 years later, in 2009, when it appeared in historian Taylor Branch’s The Clinton Tapes, a transcribed collection of recorded interviews with the former president. His second-hand account remains the only one that’s ever actually been published.
During his brief 2-day visit to the American capital, Yeltsin and his entourage stayed at Blair House, the guest house historically reserved - since FDR made it so in 1942 - for visiting dignitaries and heads of state.
Sometime around midnight, after most everyone had gone to sleep, the Russian president, in a not-uncommon, vodka-fueled drunken stupor, slipped out of his room wearing only a pair of shoes and tighty-whities, snuck past the security detail posted around the building, and wandered out into the mean streets of DC in search of a place that could satisfy what had clearly become an irresistible craving for pizza.
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