Hillary Clinton's bizarre -- and false -- sniper fire claim is starting to cause her campaign problems.
Howard Wolfson, Clinton's PR flack, now says she "misspoke" when claiming to have been under enemy sniper fire in Tuzla, Bosnia.
Bluntly: that's bull. Misspeaking is the act of saying something other than what you meant.
The truth is that the Clinton campaign is completely freaked out that this will sink her campaign.
As ABC News senior national correspondent Claire Shipman said on This Week with George Stephanopolous, Clinton's sniper claim claim will "get her into trouble."
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On at least two different occasions -- one of them after being pressed by a reporter on her recollection, given Sinbad's different point of view -- Clinton deliberately said that there was no greeting ceremony due to the dangerous conditions and that she was rushed from the plane to waiting vehicles.
No such thing occurred. Why did she make her false statement? Poor memory? Confusion? A deliberate attempt to mislead? Who knows. Whatever the case, it's clear that she said what she meant to say.
- This wasn't a just a simple slip of the tongue. Her initial speech and subsequent discussions with reporters clearly reflect an effort to make her mission seem dangerous.
- She repeated her remarks, even when challenged by the media (and Sinbad).
- In defending her tale, she arranged for third-party validation from both Togo West, the Clinton Administration Secretary of the Army, and Lissa Muscatine, a Clinton speechwriter.
Only after video emerged disproving her assertions and threatening a political firestorm did she start trying to pass her false claim off as simply "misspeaking."
Watch for yourself:
Here's the original video posted last week with her press conference and the CBS footage:
And here's Clinton making the claim during her speech at GWU:
Saying she misspoke just perpetuates the impression that Clinton and her campaign are not straight shooters.
It's an attempt at damage control -- and a bad one.
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Updates:
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Update 1 @ 12:50pm Pacific: The "sniper fire" claim hits cable TV. Here's video from MSNBC:
When will the rest of the media catch up to MSNBC?
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Update 2 @ 1:50pm Pacific:
The media is starting to pick this up. In the past hour, CNN's Jack Cafferty delivered the most brutal assessment yet of her false claims.
Here's a sampling of what's out there at this hour:
Articles:
ABC News: Clinton Bosnia Account Comes Under Fire
Washington Post: More Incoming Fire For Clinton
Associated Press: Clinton 'misspoke' on Bosnia trip
NY Observer: Wolfson: Clinton 'Misspoke' In Her Tuzla Account
NY Times: Clinton ‘Misspoke’ About Bosnia Trip, Campaign Says
Video:
CNN's Jack Cafferty: "Why would Hillary Clinton not tell the truth about her trip to Bosnia?"
MSNBC: Truth Squad Debunks Clinton's False Claims
ABC News Senior Correspondent Claire Shipman: Sniper fire claim will "get her into trouble"
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Update 2.5 (was 3):
ABC News has placed the "Hillary in Tuzla" trailer video in their Media Player! (Warning: Don't click on that link unless you open it in a new window as it will annoyingly resize your web browser otherwise, plus it forces you to watch a 0:30 advertisement.)
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Update 3:
Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News, the CBS correspondent who reported on then-First Lady Hillary Clinton's trip to Tuzla, Bosnia reports today:
Not The Safest Trip, But No Sniper Fire
[snip]
In reality, we had no known incidents of enemy fire on our aircraft. Mindful of the fact that we were with the First Lady, and that she was venturing farther inside Bosnia than her husband the President had ever gone, reporters kept a close eye to the crowds and never entirely went off-guard.
However, the mood upon first landing at the Tuzla airport was light. Children were there on the tarmac to greet the first lady, Chelsea was by her side, Bosnian dignitaries had gathered: It felt safe.
Emphasis added.
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Update 4: Clinton Dismisses Her Tale of Bosnian Sniper Fire as a "Minor Blip"
Philadelphia Daily News' senior writer Will Bunch asks HRC about her false claim and gets this 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. 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 made a -- I took her stuff and then I left, Now that's my memory of it.
Bunch asked her if this story damaged her credibility on foreign policy:
"No, 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 mistatement."
Here's an excerpt from Olbermann's segment. Full segment at MSNBC.com.
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Update 5: CBS Exposes Hillary Clinton Bosnia Trip.
Money quote: "It makes the case for Senator Obama that all this experience that she's been talking about is at least partly her imagination." (Mike Allen)
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Also posted here.