Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain faced fresh pressure today to explain allegations of sexual harassment and contain a crisis threatening his 2012 bid.
Mr Cain declared himself the victim of a "smear campaign" a day after giving conflicting accounts of whether a woman who accused him of sexual harassment was paid a settlement to end her complaint.
In speeches and media appearances, Mr Cain first said yesterday he was unaware that a settlement had been paid. By the end of the day he had backtracked.
But today, Mr Cain acknowledged that a cash payout was made to a woman who filed a harassment claim when she worked at the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s when he headed the organization.
But he told CNN Headline News that at the time he did not consider this to be a "settlement" but rather a separation "agreement," which led to yesterday's confusion.
"I didn't change my story. I just simply got the wording right and the difference between settlement and agreement is a difference for me," he said.
Mr Cain said he was only aware of one woman who had made the accusation. The news website Politico said there were two.
The accusations have cast a cloud over his high-flying presidential campaign. Mr Cain leads some Republican polls two months before voters begin to pick their 2012 nominee.
Republican strategist Matt Mackowiak, who is helping raise money for Mr Cain rival Rick Perry, said it is possible Mr Perry could benefit from Mr Cain's problems.
Mr Perry had been the Republican front-runner when he launched his presidential bid two months ago, but he has lost support to Mr Cain after a series of weak debate performances.
"The one thing you can say, as Perry's numbers went down a few months ago - that support went directly to Cain. The question is, could it go back?"
The crisis has the potential to particularly damage Mr Cain in Iowa, where evangelical voters play a dominant role. Iowa holds the first US nominating contest on January 3rd.
Iowa governor Terry Branstad told reporters in the town of Pella that he did not think Mr Cain would be hurt in his state by the accusations.
"Iowans are pretty fair-minded people," he said. "I think Iowans will carefully look at the real situation and not jump to any conclusions."
The controversy has knocked Mr Cain off his pro-jobs economic message and put him into a defensive crouch. He told CNN that his wife of more than 40 years, Gloria, was aware of the accusations when they were lodged.
And he said the controversy has led to a big increase in fund-raising as donors send in their checks to him.
"It is a smear campaign," Mr Cain said. "When they cannot kill my ideas like 9-9-9, they come after me personally."
Mr Cain (65) has denounced the allegations as baseless and has gone from recalling very little about them to remembering more details, such as one reason why the woman apparently complained.
"I referenced this lady's height and I was standing near her, and I did this saying, 'You're the same height of my wife,' because my wife is five feet tall and she comes up to my chin," Mr Cain told PBS on Monday night.
But today on CNN he said the woman had been making "huge claims about sexual harassment" and that he believed she had been paid three to six months of severance.
"I do recall that she was asking for a large sum of money. I don't remember what that sum of money was. But as the review of this moved forward that sum of money ... got less and less and less because her attorney started to figure out she didn't have a valid claim," Mr Cain said.
Mr Cain has caught fire as a conservative alternative to more moderate Republican Mitt Romney in the race to challenge US president Barack Obama. Mr Cain's signature 9-9-9 policy issue is a plan for a 9 per cent personal income and corporate tax rate and for creating a 9 per cent national sales tax.
Analysts said Mr Cain needed to tell a straight story with as many facts about the accusation he can muster.
"For any high-profile candidate suffering under such an accusation, whatever facts there are that are known to the candidate should all be known immediately. That's not the way he's handled it so far," said Republican strategist Charlie Black.
Mr Cain, commenting on whether there was "anything else" to emerge, said:
"Not that I know of. I knew about that one case at the restaurant association. I was in business before I ran for president for 42 years, and that was the only instance of accused sexual ... harassment, only one."
Reuters