http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/25/campaign.wrap/index.html
(CNN) -- Sen. Hillary Clinton said she "misspoke" last week when she gave a dramatic description of her arrival in Bosnia 12 years ago, recounting a landing under sniper fire.
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Then-first lady Hillary Clinton greets a girl as she and her daughter, Chelsea, arrive in Bosnia in 1996.
Clinton was responding to a question Monday from the Philadelphia Daily News' editorial board about video footage of the event that contradicted her assertion that her group "ran with our heads down" from the plane to avoid sniper fire at the Tuzla Air Base.
Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for rival Sen. Barack Obama's campaign, said the Bosnia claim was part of "a growing list of instances in which Sen. Clinton has exaggerated her role in foreign and domestic policymaking."
Clinton told the paper's editorial board it was a "minor blip." Video Watch how Clinton described her trip »
"I say a lot of things -- millions of words a day -- so if I misspoke, that was just a misstatement," she said.
In a foreign policy speech last week at George Washington University, Clinton used the description of the dangerous arrival to bolster her argument that she has the foreign policy experience needed to be commander in chief.
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She said when she arrived in Bosnia on March 25, 1996, "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."
But news video footage of her arrival at Tuzla shows Clinton, then the first lady, calmly walking from the rear ramp of a U.S. Air Force C-17 transport plane with her daughter, Chelsea, then 16, at her side. Both Clintons held their heads up and did not appear rushed as they walked toward the group waiting on the tarmac to welcome them.
The video shows Clinton spending several minutes talking with the group, including an 8-year-old Bosnian girl who presented her with a poem, and later greeting U.S. troops.
Clinton has mentioned the sniper fire at least twice earlier in the campaign, including in December in Dubuque, Iowa, before the caucuses in that state.
"We landed in one of those corkscrew landings and ran out because they said there might be sniper fire," Clinton said. "I don't remember anybody offering me tea on the tarmac when that was happening."
Clinton's campaign has made foreign policy experience a centerpiece of her effort to come back against Obama, whom she is trailing in delegates for the Democratic presidential nomination.
During Monday's editorial meeting -- in which Clinton was seeking the Daily News' endorsement ahead of Pennsylvania's April 22 primary -- she was asked about the apparent discrepancy. The newspaper reported her response:
"Now let me tell you what I can remember, OK -- because what I was told was that we had to land a certain way and move quickly because of the threat of sniper fire. So I misspoke -- I didn't say that in my book or other times but if I said something that made it seem as though there was actual fire -- that's not what I was told," she told the newspaper.
"I was told we had to land a certain way, we had to 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 that there was this 8-year-old girl and, I can't, I can't rush by her, I've got to at least greet her -- so I greeted her, I took her stuff and then I left. Now that's my memory of it."
The first lady's official schedule for the day -- made public by the National Archives last week -- said U.S. Ambassador John Menzies would introduce Clinton to the greeters, the Bosnian girl would read her poem and Clinton would meet a seventh-grade class.
The schedule noted that Ejup Ganic, the acting president of Bosnia, would be among those greeting the first lady.
Video footage showed Clinton walking on the tarmac with about a dozen young people, but it was not clear if they were the seventh-graders mentioned on her schedule.
American comedian Sinbad and singer Sheryl Crowe were also on the trip with Clinton, the schedule said.
Meanwhile, as Clinton backpedaled from the description of her Bosnia trip, the senator from New York is keeping her focus on the economy with a town hall-style meeting Tuesday in Greensburg, Pennsylvania.
Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, also is focusing on the economy. He's participating in a roundtable Tuesday in Santa Ana, California.
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Obama has no public events scheduled Tuesday. The senator from Illinois is wrapping up a brief vacation to the U.S. Virgin Islands.