http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/ en-us Copyright 2008 Thu, 27 Mar 2008 06:00:00 -0400 http://www.movabletype.org/?v=3.36 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Pat Nixon, landing in Saigon, July 31, 1969. "I was the first first lady taken into a war zone since Eleanor Roosevelt." --Hillary Clinton, press conference, March 25, 2008. The Clinton campaign has cited newspaper accounts, including one in The Washington Post, to bolster her claim that her now famous March 1996 trip to Bosnia was the first visit to a "war zone" by a first lady since World War II. She is overlooking a trip to Saigon by Pat Nixon at the height of the Vietnam war as well as a trip by Barbara Bush to Saudi Arabia two months before the launching of Desert Storm. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/03/dont_forget_pat_nixon.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/03/dont_forget_pat_nixon.html Candidate Watch Thu, 27 Mar 2008 06:00:00 -0400 Campaigning at the University of Pittsburgh, March 25, 2008 "I did misspeak the other day. This has been a very long campaign. Occasionally, I am a human being like everybody else....I have written about it in my book and talked about it on many other occasions and last week, you know, for the first time in 12 or so years I misspoke." --Hillary Clinton, Interview with KDKA Pittsburgh radio, March 25, 2008. Hillary Clinton has finally admitted that she "misspoke" when claiming that she came "under sniper fire" in Bosnia during a March 1996 visit to U.S. troops enforcing the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement. At first, the Clinton campaign maintained that the "mistatement" was limited to one occasion on March 17 when she talked about running across the tarmac "with our heads down." In an interview yesterday with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the New York Senator attributed the mistake to http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/03/clinton_corrects_the_record.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/03/clinton_corrects_the_record.html Candidate Watch Wed, 26 Mar 2008 06:00:00 -0400 CBS News report, March 24, 2008. UPDATE Monday 8:50 P.M. As has now been conclusively established by video film and news photographs, Hillary Clinton did NOT come under sniper fire in Bosnia in March 1996 when she made a morale-boosting visit to U.S. troops enforcing the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement. But she is taking plenty of bullets for her over-dramatic accounts of the trip, and acknowledged on Monday that she had made a "misstatement." She said it should be treated as a "minor blip." Here is her full statement, in reply to questions from the Philadelphia Daily News: 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 http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/03/more_incoming_for_clinton.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/03/more_incoming_for_clinton.html Candidate Watch Mon, 24 Mar 2008 12:08:45 -0400 Greeting ceremony, Tuzla military airport, Bosnia, 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." --Hillary Clinton, speech at George Washington University, March 17, 2008. Hillary Clinton has been regaling supporters on the campaign trail with hair-raising tales of a trip she made to Bosnia in March 1996. In her retelling, she was sent to places that her husband, President Clinton, could not go because they were "too dangerous." When her account was challenged by one of her traveling companions, the comedian Sinbad, she upped the ante and injected even more drama into the story. In a speech earlier this week, she talked about "landing under sniper fire" and running for safety with "our heads down." http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/03/hillarys_balkan_adventures_par.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/03/hillarys_balkan_adventures_par.html Candidate Watch Fri, 21 Mar 2008 06:00:00 -0400 Visiting refugee camp in Macedonia, May 1999. ."There is no doubt that I played a major role in many of the foreign policy decisions." --Hillary Clinton, interview with NPR, March 13, 2008. Hillary Clinton has cited her experiences as First Lady as preparation for those 3 a.m. phone calls that she expects to receive as commander-in-chief. It is true that she traveled to some eighty foreign countries, including troublespots like Northern Ireland, the Balkans, and Rwanda. But did she play a "major role" in the foreign policy decision-making of the Clinton administration, as she has been claiming on the campaign trail? The Obama campaign has accused the New York senator of "gross overstatements." The Clinton camp has responded with "fact sheets" defending her record on northern Ireland and Kosovo. Let's try to sort it all out. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/03/hillarys_balkan_adventures.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/03/hillarys_balkan_adventures.html Candidate Watch Mon, 17 Mar 2008 14:52:51 -0400 Campaigning in Ohio. "I do not have to clarify it. The Canadian embassy already clarified it by saying that the story was not true. Our office has said that the story was not true. I think it is important for viewers to understand that it was not true...It did not happen." --Barack Obama, Ohio TV station WKYC, February 29, 2008. For the last four days, the Obama campaign, and the candidate himself, has been furiously denying a story first aired by Canadian television on Wednesday, February 27. The story has gone through several different versions. In its original form, CTV said that a "top staffer" from the Obama campaign had telephoned the Canadian ambassador to warn him that the candidate would soon be speaking out against NAFTA, the 1993 free trade agreement between the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The staffer allegedly told the ambassador that "the criticisms would http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/03/obama_parses_his_words.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/03/obama_parses_his_words.html Candidate Watch Mon, 03 Mar 2008 11:35:05 -0400 Cincinnati, Ohio, Feb. 23, 2008. "Shame on you, Barack Obama. It is time you ran a campaign consistent with your messages in public. That's what I expect from you." --Hillary Clinton news conference, Cincinnati, Ohio, Feb. 23, 2008. Hillary Clinton made a fine show of indignation in Ohio over the weekend, accusing Barack Obama of distorting her positions on NAFTA and universal health care. Both candidates have been trying to convince Ohio voters that they would fight to protect the interests of American workers from "unfair" trade deals such as NAFTA. But neither Obama nor Clinton is being entirely honest on the NAFTA issue. They have both exaggerated their opposition to the 1993 free trade agreement with Mexico and Canada and misstated the other's position. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/02/feuding_over_nafta_1.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/02/feuding_over_nafta_1.html Candidate Watch Tue, 26 Feb 2008 06:00:00 -0400 CNN Debate in Austin, Texas, Feb. 21, 2008. "Lifting whole passages from other peoples speeches is not change you can believe in, but change that you can xerox." --Hillary Clinton, CNN debate, Feb. 21, 2008. The generally civil Democratic debate from Texas produced a few contentious moments, particularly when Hillary Clinton repeated her plagiarism charge against Barack Obama. Both candidates made minor factual errors during the course of the 90-minute debate, but there were no huge howlers. Here are the exchanges that caught the Fact Checker's attention. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/02/obama_vs_clinton.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/02/obama_vs_clinton.html Candidate Watch Thu, 21 Feb 2008 22:51:23 -0400 CNN/YouTube debate, July 24, 2007 "I said early in this campaign I would meet not just with our friends, but with our enemies. Not just with those we like, but those that we don't...Senator Clinton said, 'oh no, that'd be naive, that'd be irresponsible.' I said, 'remember what John F. Kennedy said, he said 'you should never negotiate out of fear, but you should never fear to negotiate.'" --Barack Obama, Florence, SC, Jan. 25, 2008. During the run-up to Super Tuesday, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton re-ignited an old argument about negotiating with foreign leaders. The dispute goes back to an exchange in a CNN/YouTube debate in July 2007, when each candidate was asked whether he/she would agree to meet the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea "without precondition during the first year of your administration." Obama said 'yes'; Clinton replied 'no.' You can see the http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/02/hillary_vs_barack_on_meeting_w.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/02/hillary_vs_barack_on_meeting_w.html Candidate Watch Mon, 04 Feb 2008 11:30:20 -0400 UPDATE FRIDAY 10.30 A.M. Clinton the "negotiator" The Clinton campaign has provided various news clips to support Hillary Clinton's claim during last night's debate about "negotiating with governments like Macedonia to open their border again, to let Kosovar refugees in." The news articles make clear that Clinton visited Albanian refugee camps in Macedonia on May 14, 1999, during the NATO bombing war against Serbia. Macedonia had closed its borders the previous week, in order to stem the flow of Albanian refugees from Kosovo. The Macedonian government reopened the border on May 13, the day before Clinton toured the camps. According to this CNN report, only a few stragglers crossed the border. Clearly, Clinton's visit to Macedonia helped focus even more international attention on the country and the refugee crisis that resulted from the forced expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Albanians from Kosovo by the Serbian authorities. According to a http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/01/democratic_debate_jan_30_2008.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/01/democratic_debate_jan_30_2008.html Live Fact Check Thu, 31 Jan 2008 18:03:22 -0400 Diplomatic reporter Glenn Kessler joined me for a live fact check of Thursday night's Republican debate on Fox News from Myrtle Beach in South Carolina. We were backed up by researcher Alice Crites and editor Tim Curran. This was our second live fact check. We inaugurated this new feature with the back-to-back Republican and Democratic debates from Saint Anselm College in Manchester, N.H., last Saturday. You can read the Saint Anselm transcript here. Since this was a live fact check, we did not issue any definitive rulings. Our aim was more modest--to flag questionable statements and contribute to a more informed discussion. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/01/live_debate_fact_check_1.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/01/live_debate_fact_check_1.html Live Fact Check Thu, 10 Jan 2008 19:40:24 -0400 With Irish leaders Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness, Dec. 7, 2007 "I went [to Northern Ireland] more than my husband did. I was working to help change the atmosphere among people because leaders alone rarely make peace. They have to bring people along who believe peace is in their interests. I remember a meeting that I pulled together in Belfast, in the town hall there, bringing together for the first time Catholics and Protestants..." --Hillary Clinton, Nashua, N.H. Jan. 6, 2008. Hillary Clinton has repeatedly cited her White House years as key to why she has the ability to serve as president from "Day One." Both she and her husband have pointed to her "independent" role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland as an example of her foreign policy experience. Her critics, notably former Clinton pollster Dick Morris, have poured scorn on her claim that she was "intimately involved" http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/01/clinton_and_northern_ireland.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/01/clinton_and_northern_ireland.html Candidate Watch Thu, 10 Jan 2008 10:27:06 -0400 UPDATED Monday 11:30 a.m. I am at Manchester airport, on my way back to Baltimore, after a fascinating four days in the Granite State. I will file a wrapup report tomorrow. There have been lots of statements to fact check, several of which will take a little more time. Here are a couple of quick ones that caught my attention from Clinton's Town Hall meeting in Peterborough and a Mitt Romney "Ask Mitt anything" meeting in Salem. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/01/offbase_on_nafta_and_hillary_c.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/01/offbase_on_nafta_and_hillary_c.html Candidate Watch Mon, 07 Jan 2008 18:37:05 -0400 Monday, 9 a.m. I'm still in New Hampshire. Here are a couple more fact checks on Saturday's Republican debate in Manchester that we did not get around to posting in our live debate fact check. I am off to listen to Bill Clinton in Peterborough, and then Mitt Romney this afternoon. "I supported the president and the war before you [Mitt Romney] did. I supported the surge when you didn't". --Mike Huckabee. Huckabee was simply wrong on this, as the Romney campaign was quick to point out. http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/01/nh_one_day_to_go.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/01/nh_one_day_to_go.html Candidate Watch Sun, 06 Jan 2008 10:36:25 -0400 We assembled a team of crack fact checkers to truth squad the Republican and Democratic debates at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, and call the candidates out for any inaccuracies. Environmental reporter Juliet Eilperin was sitting next to me in the media filing center. She is also an expert on Congress, having covered it all her life. We were joined in Washington by John Solomon, a veteran political reporter for the Associated Press and now the Post, and diplomatic reporter Glenn Kessler. Prior to the foreign policy beat, Glenn covered economics. I was a foreign correspondent for the Post for more than a decade, and also covered education, so I hope we will be able to weigh in quickly on most factual disputes. Backing us up In Washington were ace researcher Alice Crites and editor Steve Ginsberg. Since this was a live fact check, we are not going to issue http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/01/live_debate_fact_check.html http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/01/live_debate_fact_check.html Live Fact Check Sat, 05 Jan 2008 22:44:14 -0400