Word: ralstons
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...Clark learned that the Pentagon would be relieving him of his NATO post in early 2000, three months before his European tour was to end. According to Samuel Berger, Clinton's National Security Adviser, the Pentagon had told Clinton that the military career of Air Force General Joseph Ralston was winding up. Ralston was then serving as Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and Clinton felt he owed him. Ralston, after all, had lost his bid to become the chairman in 1997, when a controversy erupted over an extramarital affair...
Clinton approved Ralston as a replacement for Clark, Berger says, thinking it would happen only when Clark's term ended, not three months early. But the news of Clinton's choice of Ralston quickly leaked, along with an explanation that Clark would have to leave the post early to accommodate the Pentagon's arcane promotion timetable. "We approved a succession, not an execution," Berger recalls. Clark has described that day as one of the two worst of his life, the other being the day he was wounded in Vietnam...
...Ralston's adventuring has nearly killed him at least once before. According to the Aspen Times, he has made more than 40 solo winter climbs of Colorado's Fourteeners (peaks taller than 14,000 ft.), bringing just water, candy bars and an ice ax--no cell phone, no GPS, not so much as a rope. In February, while skiing near Vail, Colo., Ralston was buried to his neck in an avalanche; a friend was completely submerged for 10 minutes. When an Aspen Times reporter came calling in March for a story on Ralston's climbing feats, the outdoorsman told...
While an engineer at Intel in the late '90s, Ralston told the Times, he saw the IMAX movie Everest, which tells the story of a team of climbers whose attempted ascent turned deadly. Ralston was intrigued. He told the paper he quit the Intel job when he couldn't take three weeks to go climbing in Alaska. Since then, he has made a life of exploring the outdoors and following the jam bands Phish and String Cheese Incident while working at Ute Mountaineer in Aspen...
After the avalanche, a friend pulled Ralston aside, according to the Aspen paper, and said, "Aron, I think you were headed for trouble; if this hadn't happened now, it could have been--or will be--deadly." It seems Aron Ralston has cheated death again, but at quite a price. --Reported by Rita Healy/Denver and Peta Owens-Liston/Salt Lake City