Hillary Clinton’s campaign acknowledged Monday that she “misspoke” when asserting that she landed “under sniper fire” in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a claim mocked by Barack Obama’s campaign.
The admission played into arguments by Obama aides that Clinton has exaggerated her foreign policy exploits, including a widely disputed claim that she helped bring peace to Northern Ireland while her husband was president.
Clinton last week gave a harrowing description of her 1996 visit to Bosnia, where she arrived on a C-17 military plane at Tuzla Air Base, which was heavily guarded by U.S. forces.
“I remember landing under sniper fire,” she said. “There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.”
But news footage of Clinton landing at the base shows a relaxed first lady strolling off the plane with her daughter, Chelsea, to cheerfully greet a young Bosnian girl on the tarmac. There were no indications of sniper fire.
“It is possible in the most recent instance in which she discussed this that she misspoke in regard to the exit from the plane,” Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson told reporters in a conference call Monday.
In fact, Clinton made the claim even earlier, telling an audience last month that the welcoming ceremony in Bosnia “had to be moved inside because of sniper fire.”
Wolfson said that Clinton “clearly meant to say” what she had written in her 2003 memoir, “Living History:” “Due to reports of snipers in the hills around the airstrip, we were forced to cut short an event on the tarmac with local children.”
The latest explanations by the Clinton campaign were ridiculed Monday by Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor.
“Senator Clinton said that a planned welcoming ceremony was canceled because they needed to avoid sniper fire, but news footage shows that she was met by a small child who read her a poem,” Vietor said. “Contrary to the latest spin from the Clinton campaign, when you make a false claim that’s in your prepared remarks, it’s not misspeaking, it’s misleading, and it’s part of a troubling pattern of Senator Clinton inflating her foreign policy experience.”
Clinton spokesman Phil Singer responded by accusing the Clinton camp of “insults and slander.” He complained that Obama adviser Merrill McPeak, a retired Air Force general, compared former President Bill Clinton to the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy.
But Clinton supporters have made provocative comparisons of their own. Over the weekend, longtime Clinton loyalist James Carville likened New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson to “Judas” for endorsing Obama.
