March 25 (Bloomberg) -- Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her staff said she misspoke when saying she landed under sniper fire during a March 1996 trip to Bosnia as first lady.

``I did make a mistake in talking about it the last time, and recently,'' Clinton told reporters in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. ``I made a mistake. I have a different memory. That happens. I'm human. For some people that's a revelation.''

During a speech last week in Washington, she said, ``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 February, she made a similar claim during a speech in Waco, Texas.

Clinton told editors and reporters at the Philadelphia Daily News yesterday that her aircraft had to ``land a certain way'' and the group had to move quickly because of the threat of sniper fire.

The day's events are at issue because campaign rival Barack Obama is using competing versions of the event to question whether Clinton is exaggerating her experience. Today, the Obama campaign released four examples of Clinton describing landing under sniper fire in Bosnia. In a radio interview on Pittsburgh radio station KDKA, Clinton said, ``for the first time in 12 or so years I misspoke.''

`Lighten Up'

She played down that comment later, telling reporters, ``I was joking, gosh, lighten up guys.''

Clinton told the Daily News yesterday she was remembering the threat and didn't mean to say there was actual sniper fire.

``What I was told was that we had to land a certain way and move quickly because of the threat of sniper fire,'' Clinton said, according to a transcript on the newspaper's Web site. ``So I misspoke -- I didn't say that in my book or other times, but if I said something that made it seem as though there was actual fire -- that's not what I was told.''

When a reporter pushed her on the issue, she called the issue a ``minor blip,'' according to the Daily News. ``I say a lot of things -- millions of words a day -- so if I misspoke, that was just a misstatement.''

Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson yesterday told reporters on a conference call that she had described the situation before in the correct way, including in her book. He also said that she misspoke last week during the speech on the Iraq War at George Washington University.

`Living History'

In her book, ``Living History,'' Clinton wrote about the landing that day in Bosnia. ``Above the airstrip, the captain dipped a wing and made a near-perpendicular landing to evade possible ground fire,'' she wrote.

Campaign advisers today referred reporters to the transcript of yesterday's call and declined to comment further on the specific incident. When asked whether it raised questions about Clinton's veracity, campaign spokesman Phil Singer said she can be counted on to keep her word.

``You can count on Senator Clinton when she says she's going to end the war in Iraq,'' Singer said. ``She has amassed a record over her 35 years of public life of doing the things she says.''

Clinton, a New York senator, is campaigning today in Pennsylvania, where she is favored to win the April 22 Democratic primary. Her campaign is looking for a big victory as it struggles to catch up with Illinois Senator Obama in the number of delegates to the Democratic convention that will determine the nominee.

To contact the reporters on this story: Lorraine Woellert in Greensburg, Pennsylvania at lwoellert@bloomberg.net; Kristin Jensen in Pittsburgh at kjensen@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: March 25, 2008 16:28 EDT