Air Force pilot recounts Clinton's infamous Bosnia flight

BY GLENN THRUSH | glenn.thrush@newsday.com

March 27, 2008

WASHINGTON - Oh, the horror.

A retired Air Force officer who claims to have piloted Hillary Rodham Clinton on her 1996 flight to Bosnia raised doubts about her recollection that passengers sat on flak jackets to protect themselves -- joking that Clinton borrowed the detail from the Vietnam epic "Apocalypse Now."

Clinton conceded Tuesday her account of dodging "sniper fire" during a tour in the Balkans was a "mistake."

Retired Col. William "Goose" Changose, speaking yesterday with conservative radio host Rusty Humphries, said the Tuzla air base was under such tight security for Clinton's March 1996 visit "there wasn't a bumblebee flying around."

Of the former first lady's claim that some passengers in the C-17 cargo plane were ordered to sit on bulletproof vests, Changose said: "It was not under my direction. ... I remember that in "Apocalypse Now" they sat on their flak jackets. Nobody under my watch has ever directed somebody to sit on their flak jackets."

A Clinton spokesman had no comment.

The episode, a hot topic on talk radio for the past week, comes at a bad time for Clinton, who has faced calls to leave the race sincefalling behind Barack Obama in elected delegates. In an indication she plans to fight on, Clinton donors are pressuring House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to drop her call for the race to be decided by such delegates -- and not unelected superdelegates, according to a letter obtained by the Talking Points Memo Web site.

As Clinton struggled to move past the Bosnia dust-up, the Obama camp was hit by another controversy involving the candidate's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.. In a eulogy in the November/December issue of the Trumpet Newsmagazine, which is published by his daughter, Wright reportedly takes aim at "Italians" who he said crucified Jesus.

" enemies had their opinion about Him. ... The Italians for the most part looked down their garlic noses at the Galileans," Wright wrote, according to the conservative Cybercast News Service, which transcribed the article before most of it was removed from the magazine's Web site early yesterday.

"The government runs everything from the White House to the schoolhouse, from the Capitol to the Klan, white supremacy is clearly in charge," Wright wrote. Calls to Trumpet's publisher, Jeri Wright, weren't returned last night.

The pastor's controversial comments on race and HIV might be having a impact on Obama, according to a new NBC/Wall St. Journal poll released yesterday.

Fifty-five percent of those surveyed said they were "disturbed" by Wright's remarks, with 38 percent saying Obama's speech on race last week didn't answer all their questions about his relationship with Wright.

Obama, fresh from a Virgin Islands vacation, seemed eager to move on from the controversy at an appearance in Greensboro, N.C., yesterday.

"We can't afford to be distracted ... every time somebody somewhere says something stupid that everybody gets up in arms and we forget about the war in Iraq and we forget about the economy," he said.