WASHINGTON - When Joe Biden tells voters he understands the threat posed
by Afghan extremists, he dramatically illustrates one reason why: His
helicopter was "forced down" on "the superhighway of terror." Actually,
snow, not the enemy, persuaded the helicopter pilot to land and wait out
a storm.
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The Democratic vice presidential candidate has repeatedly left that part
out, in an episode that Republicans hope will become an echo of Hillary
Rodham Clinton's errant tale during the primaries of landing in Bosnia
under sniper fire.

Biden has made a number of questionable statements recently that, viewed
in isolation, might not amount to much. But this is a man whose first
presidential campaign collapsed 20 years ago after he told a story about
coal miners in his family that he lifted without credit from a British
politician.

In a recent speech in Virginia coal country, Biden seemed to embellish
his background once again. He declared, "I am a hard coal miner," which
he's not and never has been. His spokesman, David Wade, said Biden was
joking.

And looking back on his 1972 Senate campaign, he told Pennsylvania
delegates at the Democratic convention that people from his hometown of
Scranton, Pa., piled in up to 10 buses and drove to Wilmington, Del., to
show him support. "Literally," he said, "there were hundreds of thousands
of people."

THE HELICOPTER SPIN:

In a Baltimore speech last week, Biden said: "If you want to know where
al-Qaida lives, you want to know where (Osama) bin Laden is, come back to
Afghanistan with me. Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced
down with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the
middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are."

Two days later, in Cincinnati, he said al-Qaida has re-established a safe
haven and it's not in Baghdad. "It's in the mountains between Afghanistan
and Pakistan," he said, "where my helicopter was recently forced down."

At a Sept. 9, fundraiser, Biden addressed his national security
credentials by talking about "the superhighway of terror between Pakistan
and Afghanistan where my helicopter was forced down. John McCain wants to
know where bin Ladin and the gates of Hell are? I can tell him where.
That's where al-Qaida is. That's where bin Ladin is."

THE FACTS: In February, Biden and fellow senators John Kerry and Chuck
Hagel were flying in a helicopter over Afghanistan in a fact-finding trip
when a snowstorm closed in.

"It went pretty blind, pretty fast and we were around some pretty
dangerous ridges," Kerry told The Associated Press afterward. "So the
pilot exercised his judgment that we were better off putting down there,
and we all agreed."

He said the group waited for about three hours until a convoy with U.S.
troops took them to Bagram Air Base.

"We sat up there and traded stories," Kerry joked. "We were going to send
Biden out to fight the Taliban with snowballs, but we didn't have to do
it."

He added: "Other than getting a little cold, it was fine."

The area was reported as not being under Taliban control. But Wade noted
"it's the wild west out there" and the senators were transported under
guard and with air cover from an F-16.

Though Biden never said his helicopter was shot at in Afghanistan, last
year he asserted that he was "shot at" in Iraq. He amended that later,
saying the quarters he was staying in while visiting Baghdad's protected
Green Zone shook from a nearby blast, and "I was near where a shot
landed."

The McCain campaign jumped on the Biden stories Wednesday, putting out a
statement from a retired Black Hawk pilot saying there is no mistaking
being shot at or forced down by the enemy.

But if Biden was not literally in the sights of the enemy in Iraq, he
unquestionably went through several dicey situations verified by other
lawmakers there, including the explosion of a mortar near the compound
and his plane's evasive maneuvers while taking off, in response to a
possible missile attack.

THE COAL SPIN: In a speech at a United Mine Workers fish fry in
Castlewood, Va., on Sept. 21, Biden told the miners he is one of them.
"Hope you won't hold it against me, but I am a hard coal miner —
anthracite coal, Scranton, Pennsylvania, that's where I was born and
raised," he said.

Biden mentioned his great-grandfather, a mining engineer who became a
state senator in the early 1900s.

THE FACTS: Biden was born in Scranton, moved to Delaware at age 10 and
has never had experience in the mines. His father worked in the oil
business and ran a Delaware car dealership.

Biden's comment was reported at face value in press accounts from the
event. Wade said it wasn't meant to be taken literally.

"Judging by the laughter and applause, I think it was clear to everyone
under the sun that they got the joke from this son of Scranton's coal
country," Wade said. An AP reporter who covered the speech said Biden's
claim came across as a genial if awkwardly self-deprecating effort to
establish a bond with the miners — not a joke.

In his 2007 memoirs, Biden put his roots in a more modest context: "I had
ancestors from the coal mining town of Scranton."

In 1987 at the Iowa State Fair, Biden both borrowed and slightly adapted
lines from Neil Kinnock, then British Labor Party leader, in portraying
himself as the descendant of coal miners. In one of the lifted lines,
Biden talked about: "My ancestors, who worked in the coal mines of
Northeast Pennsylvania and would come up after 12 hours and play football
for four hours."

(Kinnock had talked about Welsh ancestors "who could work eight hours
underground and then come up and play football.")

Biden also was found to have exaggerated his academic record during that
campaign and a plagiarism episode from his school days emerged. The
revelations crippled his Democratic primary campaign and he pulled out of
the presidential race.

___

Associated Press Writer Robert Q. Lewis in Richmond, Va., contributed to
this report.

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