Washington, Sep.22 (ANI): Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin got so drunk during a 1995 visit to Washington that Secret Service agents found him a few hundred feet from the White House clad only in his underwear and trying to hail a cab. He later explained that he wanted a pizza.

The encounter was revealed yesterday in a new oral history of Bill Clinton’s presidency, based on 79 taped interviews between Clinton and the historian Taylor Branch during late-night visits to the White House, reports The Times.

The taped conversations took place between 1993 and 2001, the year Clinton left the office.

Clinton also confided that his affair with Monica Lewinsky occurred when he felt sorry for himself and that “I cracked; I just cracked” under the pressure of personal and political setbacks, including the death of his mother and the loss of Congress to the Republicans in 1994.

Branch, who shared a flat with Clinton when they ran George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign in Texas, has turned the tapes into a 707-page book, The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President, to be published next week.

The tapes also reveal a two-hour argument between Clinton and Vice President Al Gore after the latter had lost the 2000 election to George W. Bush.

Clinton told Gore that the election could have been won if he had been dispatched to campaign in Arkansas and New Hampshire, states where Clinton was popular.

Gore responded that Clinton’s affair with Ms Lewinsky had been a “drag” that had plagued him throughout the doomed campaign. The two “exploded” at each other in mutual recrimination, according to Branch. (ANI)