Landing amid sniper fire, first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and her entourage ran across a Bosnia tarmac — ducking for cover — and into a motorcade that whisked them to a U.S. military outpost on a trip so dangerous that the president himself couldn't make it.

That's the story I would have written in March 1996, had a word of it been true. But it's pure fiction — a figment of Clinton's imagination. Take it from a reporter who accompanied her on the trip:

• There was no sniper fire.

• Nobody ducked for cover.

• Bad weather, not security concerns, kept her husband from making the same trip a few months earlier.

Confronted with overwhelming evidence of her fabrication, the New York senator is backpedaling from the tale, but key questions remain. Why didn't she just stick with the facts — that she traveled to a dangerous part of the world under intense security to salute U.S. troops? Is this part of a pattern of embellishment that should concern voters? And, finally, is she held to a higher standard than her rival, Barack Obama?

The answers: Yes, she is held to a higher standard and, yes, she does exaggerate her credentials. Perhaps she's driven by insecurity; Clinton must think her resume needs padding to reflect "35 years of experience" and the promise to be "ready on Day One."

The truth should have been good enough for her.

Journalists who accompanied Clinton were warned that Bosnia was hostile territory and that there had been sniper fire reported in the hills surrounding the tarmac at some point before the trip. The story I wrote that day began, "Venturing to the front lines of the Bosnia peacekeeping mission, Hillary Rodham Clinton greeted U.S. troops today and heard horror stories about the region's devastating civil war."

It continued: "Security was tight — fighter jets accompanied her DC-17 cargo plane to Tuzla — but officials said the first lady took no extraordinary risks on the trip."

In her biography, Clinton wrote about the reports of snipers in the hills and said she met with local children on the tarmac, adding that the gathering was cut short by security concerns. All plausible.

But during a speech last week on Iraq, Clinton stretched the truth to the breaking point. "I certainly do remember that trip to Bosnia and ... there was a saying around the White House that if a place was too small, too poor, or too dangerous, the president couldn't go, so send the first lady. That's where we went. I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base."

Clinton and her aides initially dismissed questions about the story, which she has told more than once. Clinton characterized the episode as a "misstatement" and "minor blip" only after video surfaced showing the former first lady, her daughter, Chelsea, and their entourage strolling off the plane and walking calmly across the tarmac.

This is no minor blip. It's a pattern. Consider the fact that Clinton says she "helped bring peace to Northern Ireland." While she traveled to the region five times as first lady and was a tireless advocate for the peace process, Clinton was not directly involved in negotiating the Good Friday peace accord. It would be a stretch to call her a major player.

Clinton also claims to have negotiated open borders to let fleeing refugees into safety from Kosovo. But there were no public reports at the time of such work.

To be sure, Clinton is not the first American to pad a resume. She's not even the only candidate for president to do so.

Obama has exaggerated his role in reaching a compromise in the Senate on immigration as well as his authorship of a bill to address the housing crisis. Voters need to weigh such distortions when they consider whether the freshman senator from Illinois truly is a new breed of politician.

What makes Clinton's situation unique — and the Bosnia embellishments so damaging — is the fact that the New York senator has built her candidacy on the illusion of experience. Any attack on her credentials is a potential Achilles heel.

Second, polls show that voters wonder about her honesty and authenticity. The Bosnia story plays to that character issue. As former Vice President Al Gore could tell her, once the media and voters start doubting a candidates' integrity, every episode that fits that narrative gets blown out of proportion.

Gore never said he invented the Internet; his mistake was to place himself more centrally than warranted at the creation of the technology. But such nuance was lost on people who voted against him in 2000.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: Ron Fournier has covered politics for The Associated Press for nearly 20 years. On Deadline is an occasional column.


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Wed Mar 26, 9:10 PM ET