Mar 24, 2008 8:50 pm US/Eastern
Clinton 'Misspoke' About Bosnia Trip Danger
N.Y. Senator First Claimed She Landed Under Sniper Fire During 1996 Trip
WASHINGTON (CBS News) ―
Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign said she "misspoke" last week when she said she had landed under sniper fire during a trip she took as first lady to Bosnia in March 1996. The Obama campaign suggested it was a deliberate exaggeration on Clinton's part.
Clinton often cites the goodwill trip she took with her daughter and several celebrities as a part of her foreign policy experience.
During a speech last Monday about Iraq, she said of the trip: "I remember landing under sniper fire. 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."
Problem is: that's not how it happened at all. And we should know: CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson and a CBS News crew accompanied the First Lady on that Bosnia trip.
A photograph shows Clinton talking to Attkisson on the military flight into Tuzla.
And pictures CBS News recorded show the greeting ceremony when the plane landed.
According to an AP story at the time, Clinton was placed under no extraordinary risks on that trip. And one of her companions on it, comedian Sinbad, told The Washington Post he has no recollection either of the threat or reality of gunfire.
When asked Monday about the New York senator's recent remarks on the trip, Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson pointed to Clinton's previous written account in her book, "Living History," in which she described a shortened welcoming ceremony at Tuzla Air Base, Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Clinton wrote: "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, though we did have time to meet them and their teachers and to learn how hard they had worked during the war to continue classes in any safe spot they could find."
"That is what she wrote in her book," Wolfson said. "That is what she has said many, many times and on one occasion she misspoke."
Referring to the CBS News video, Clinton aides said Monday, it "was not quite as dramatic as Clinton put it."
"She meant that there was fire on the hillside around the area when we landed, which was the case," said Clinton campaign aid Lissa Muscatine.
The written account in Clinton's book contradicts the comments she made last Monday about the welcoming ceremony.
Just after her speech last Monday, she reaffirmed the account of running from the plane to the cars when she was asked about it by reporters at a news conference. She said was moved into the cockpit of the C-17 cargo plane as they were flying into Tuzla Air Base.
"Everyone else was told to sit on their bulletproof vests," Clinton told reporters. "And we came in, in an evasive maneuver. ... There was no greeting ceremony, and we basically were told to run to our cars. Now, that is what happened."
A spokesman for rival Barack Obama's campaign questioned whether Clinton misspoke, saying her comments came in what appeared to be prepared remarks for her speech on Iraq. The Obama campaign statement contained a link to a text of Clinton's speech that is still posted on her campaign Web site including the account of running to the cars.
Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said in a written statement that Clinton's Bosnia story "joins a growing list of instances in which Senator Clinton has exaggerated her role in foreign and domestic policymaking."
The Obama campaign statement also links to a CBS news video taken from her Bosnia trip and posted on YouTube, which shows Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea, walking across the tarmac from a large cargo plane, smiling and waving, and stopping to shake hands with Bosnia's acting president and greet an 8-year-old girl.
"This is something that the Obama campaign wants to push cause they have nothing positive to say about their candidate," Wolfson said Monday in the conference call.
(© 2008 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
