Butt Out, Bill: 'Let Me Handle It,' Hillary says

April 11, 2008— -- Former President Bill Clinton today told reporters in Terre Haute, Ind., that his wife called him and told him to stop defending her false story about landing in Bosnia in 1996 amid sniper fire.

"Hillary called me and said, 'You don't remember this. You weren't there, let me handle it.' I said, 'Yes ma'am,'" the former president said. "She said, 'Look, just let me handle this cause you don't remember it, either.'''

Campaigning in Indiana Thursday, the former president brought up his wife's discredited account of her trip to Bosnia as a way of defending her against the media. But by doing so, he revived a controversy that had mostly died down. Moreover, his explanation contained as many inaccuracies as did her original tale.

In Boonville, the former president told voters that "Hillary, one time, late at night, when she was exhausted, she misstated and immediately apologized for what happened to her in Bosnia in 1995."

That explanation is riddled with a sniper's fire worth of falsehoods. Hillary Clinton told the inaccurate story at least three times about a sniper-threatened landing in Tusla in 1996, and the one instance to which her husband was referring was midmorning. In point of fact, it took her days to acknowledge her misstatement, for which she never apologized.

"This has become another distraction in the campaign," said David Gergen, a former adviser to Bill Clinton and editor at large for U.S. News & World Report. "Her campaign keeps going sideways instead of forward."

Asked if he regretted that his statements might be distracting people from his wife's campaign, the former president told reporters, "I regret that people like you care more about that than whether she served the troops."

Hillary Clinton's campaign spokesman Phil Singer released this statement today: "Sen. Clinton appreciates her husband standing up for her, but this was her mistake and she takes responsibility for it."

The former president is, for Hillary Clinton, both an asset and liability, given his popularity among Democrats but also his sometimes disruptive behavior.