Clinton clarifies Bosnia sniper fire description

WASHINGTON - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and her campaign said yesterday that 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.

Sen. Barack Obama's campaign had suggested her description last week was a deliberate exaggeration. 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."

Clinton often cites the goodwill trip she took with her daughter, Chelsea, and several celebrities as part of her foreign-policy experience.

In a March 17 speech 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."

An Associated Press story at the time reported Clinton faced no extraordinary risks on that trip. One of her companions on it, comedian Sinbad, told the Washington Post he had no recollection of the threat or reality of gunfire.

Asked yesterday about Clinton's recent remarks, 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, in 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."

"That is what she has said many, many times, and on one occasion she misspoke," Wolfson said.

The account in her book contradicts Clinton's March 17 comments about the welcoming ceremony. Just after her speech, she reaffirmed the account of running from the plane to the cars when reporters asked about it. She said she was moved into the cockpit of the C-17 cargo plane as they flew into Tuzla.

"Everyone else was told to sit on their bulletproof vests," Clinton said. "And we came in, in an evasive maneuver. . . . There was no greeting ceremony, and we basically were told to run to our cars."

Yesterday afternoon, Clinton said at a meeting with the Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News editorial boards: "What I was told is that we had to land a certain way and move quickly because of the threat of sniper fire. So I misspoke. . . . If I said something that made it seem as though there was actual fire, that is not what I was told.

"I was told that we had to land a certain way and have our bulletproof stuff on because of the threat of sniper fire. I was also told that the greeting ceremony had been moved away from the tarmac.

"But there was this 8-year-old girl. And I said, 'I can't rush by her; I have to greet her.' So I greeted her. I took her stuff. And I left."

The Obama campaign statement linked to CBS news video taken from Clinton's Bosnia trip and posted on YouTube, which shows Clinton and her daughter walking across the tarmac from a cargo plane, smiling and waving, and stopping to shake hands with Bosnia's acting president and to greet the girl. - Wire and staff reports

In a taped interview broadcast yesterday on WPHT-AM (1210), Sen. Barack Obama defended his Chicago church and distanced himself further from its former pastor.

"This is not a crackpot church," the Democratic presidential candidate said of Trinity United Church of Christ. ". . . This is a pillar of the community, and if you go there on Easter, this Easter Sunday, and you sat down there in the pew, you would think this is just like any other church."

Questions have been raised about Obama's place of worship because its former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., has called the country the "U.S. of KKK A." and has denounced American policies as corrupt and racist.

Obama told WPHT host Michael Smerconish, who also wrote about Obama in his weekly Inquirer column Sunday, that these isolated excerpts give a distorted picture.

"The ones that are most offensive are ones that I never knew about until they were reported on," he said in the interview, taped Friday night. ". . . I don't want to suggest that somehow, the loops you have been seeing typified services all the time.

"But that is the danger of the YouTube era. It doesn't excuse what he said. But it does give it some perspective."

- Peter Mucha

WASHINGTON - The Democratic Party yesterday approved Puerto Rico's plan to scrap its caucus and hold a presidential primary June 1.

A primary will give more voters a chance to take part in the nominating process, said Puerto Rico Democratic chairman Roberto Prats. He said caucuses were fine in previous years, when the nominee was already settled and the only task was to choose delegates to attend the national convention. Puerto Rico will have 55 delegates at stake in its primary. - AP