Clinton campaign under fire over 'exaggerated' sniper claims

Published on Tuesday 25 March 2008 09:13

HILLARY CLINTON'S campaign team said she "misspoke" when saying she had landed under sniper fire during a trip to Bosnia as First Lady in March 1996.

Campaigners for Barack Obama, who has a narrow lead over Mrs Clinton in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, had suggested that the statement last week was a deliberate exaggeration by Mrs Clinton, who often cites the goodwill trip with her daughter and several celebrities as an example of her foreign policy experience.

She described the episode as a "misstatement" and a "minor blip". During a speech on Iraq, she had said of the Bosnia 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."

Media reports at the time of the trip said that Mrs Clinton was placed under no extraordinary risks on the trip.

Asked about the issue during a meeting with the Philadelphia Daily News' editorial board, Mrs Clinton said she "misspoke".

"I went to 80 countries, you know. I gave contemporaneous accounts, I wrote about a lot of this in my book. You know, I think that, a minor blip, you know, if I said something that, you know, I say a lot of things – millions of words a day – so if I misspoke, that was just a misstatement," she said.

Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said in a written statement that Mrs Clinton's Bosnia story "joins a growing list of instances in which Senator Clinton has exaggerated her role in foreign and domestic policymaking".