Below The Beltway

Faced with reality, Hillary Clinton is trying to spin her way out of the Bosnia lie:

BLUE BELL, Pa. — As part of her argument that she has the best experience and instincts to deal with a sudden crisis as president, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton recently offered a vivid description of having to run across a tarmac to avoid sniper fire after landing in Bosnia as first lady in 1996.

Yet on Monday, Mrs. Clinton admitted that she “misspoke” about the episode — a concession that came after CBS News showed footage of her walking calmly across the tarmac with her daughter, Chelsea, and being greeted by dignitaries and a child.

The backpedaling was a rare instance of Mrs. Clinton’s acknowledging an error, and she did so on a sensitive issue: She has cited her “strength and experience” since the start of the presidential race, framing her 80 trips abroad as first lady as preparation for dealing with foreign affairs as president. That argument was behind her campaign’s “red phone” commercial, which cast her as best able to handle a crisis.

Mrs. Clinton corrected herself at a meeting with the Philadelphia Daily News editorial board; she did not explain why she had misspoken, but only admitted it and then offered a less dramatic description.

Mrs. Clinton said she had been told “that we had to land a certain way and move quickly because of the threat of sniper fire,” not that actual shots were being fired.

“So I misspoke,” she said.

No, Hillary, you lied:

In her most recent account, offered last week, Mrs. Clinton described an action-packed arrival in the Balkans.

“I certainly do remember that trip to Bosnia,” she said, in remarks that aides described Monday as not being part of her prepared speech. “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.”

In interviews Monday, aides to Mrs. Clinton at the time of the trip, as well as an Associated Press photographer who was on the trip, said that she and others were briefed before landing about the possibility of sniper fire around the airport in Tuzla, Bosnia. None of the aides remembered actual sniper fire. Nor did the photographer, Doug Mills, who now works for The New York Times.

“I remember being told we were going into a war zone, but I don’t remember any commotion at the airport,” Mr. Mills said. “I don’t recall her running to cars. If that had happened, we would have made a picture of it.”

Instead, we see her calmly walking off the plane. There was no sniper fire. There was no running. There was only Hillary’s embellishment of the truth.