Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:
No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
Times and dates in your local timezone.
Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.
If you are already a member then feel free to login now.
'I spent much of the weekend thinking I'd gone crazy. I feel terrible about making this mistake'
WASHINGTON — NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams admitted Wednesday he was not aboard a helicopter hit and forced down by RPG fire during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a false claim that has been repeated by the network for years.
Williams repeated the claim Friday during NBC’s coverage of a public tribute at a New York Rangers hockey game for a retired soldier that had provided ground security for the grounded helicopters, a game to which Williams accompanied him. In an interview with Stars and Stripes, he said he had misremembered the events and was sorry.
The admission came after crew members on the 159th Aviation Regiment’s Chinook that was hit by two rockets and small arms fire told Stars and Stripes that the NBC anchor was nowhere near that aircraft or two other Chinooks flying in the formation that took fire. Williams arrived in the area about an hour later on another helicopter after the other three had made an emergency landing, the crew members said.
“I would not have chosen to make this mistake,” Williams said. “I don’t know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft with another.”
Williams told his Nightly News audience that the erroneous claim was part of a "bungled attempt" to thank soldiers who helped protect him in Iraq in 2003. “I made a mistake in recalling the events of 12 years ago,” Williams said. “I want to apologize.”
Late Wednesday, Williams’ Twitter account, with 212,000 followers, appeared to have been wiped clean.
Williams made the claim about the incident while presenting NBC coverage of the tribute to the retired command sergeant major at the Rangers game Friday. Fans gave the soldier a standing ovation.
“The story actually started with a terrible moment a dozen years back during the invasion of Iraq when the helicopter we were traveling in was forced down after being hit by an RPG,” Williams said on the broadcast. “Our traveling NBC News team was rescued, surrounded and kept alive by an armor mechanized platoon from the U.S. Army 3rd Infantry.”
Williams and his camera crew were actually aboard a Chinook in a formation that was about an hour behind the three helicopters that came under fire, according to crew member interviews.
That Chinook took no fire and landed later beside the damaged helicopter due to an impending sandstorm from the Iraqi desert, according to Sgt. 1st Class Joseph Miller, who was the flight engineer on the aircraft that carried the journalists.
“No, we never came under direct enemy fire to the aircraft,” he said Wednesday.
The helicopters, along with the NBC crew, remained on the ground at a forward operating base west of Baghdad for two or three days, where they were surrounded by an Army unit with Bradley fighting vehicles and Abrams M-1 tanks.
Miller said he never saw any direct fire on the position from Iraqi forces.
The claim rankled Miller as well as soldiers aboard the formation of 159th Aviation Regiment Chinooks that were flying far ahead and did come under attack during the March 24, 2003, mission.
One of the helicopters was hit by two rocket-propelled grenades — one did not detonate but passed through the airframe and rotor blades — as well as small arms fire.
“It was something personal for us that was kind of life-changing for me. I know how lucky I was to survive it,” said Lance Reynolds, who was the flight engineer. “It felt like a personal experience that someone else wanted to participate in and didn’t deserve to participate in.”
Reynolds said Williams and the NBC cameramen arrived in a helicopter 30 to 60 minutes after his damaged Chinook made a rolling landing at an Iraqi airfield and skidded off the runway into the desert.
He said Williams approached and took photos of the damage, but Reynolds brushed them off because the crew was assessing damage and he was worried that his wife, who was alone in Germany, might see the news report.
“I wanted to tell her myself everything was all right before she got news of this happening,” Reynolds said.
The NBC crew stayed only for about 10 minutes and then went to see the Army armored units that had been guarding the nearby Forward Operating Base Rams and came out to provide a security perimeter around the aircraft. Tim Terpak, the command sergeant major who accompanied Williams to the Rangers game, was among those soldiers, and the two struck up a friendship.
Miller, Reynolds and Mike O’Keeffe, who was a door gunner on the damaged Chinook, said they all recall NBC reporting that Williams was aboard the aircraft that was attacked, despite it being false. The NBC online archive shows the network broadcast a news story on March 26, 2003, with the headline, “Target Iraq: Helicopter NBC’s Brian Williams Was Riding In Comes Under Fire.”
Williams disputed Wednesday claims the initial reports were inaccurate, saying he originally reported he was in another helicopter but later confused the events. In a 2008 NBC blog post with his byline, he wrote that the “Chinook helicopter flying in front of ours (from the 101st Airborne) took an RPG to the rear rotor.”
O’Keeffe said the incident has bothered him since he and others first saw the original report after returning to Kuwait.
“Over the years it faded,” he said, “and then to see it last week it was — I can’t believe he is still telling this false narrative.”
.. how were there not, like, dozens of people who would have been present who didn't call shenanigans when this happened? At the very minimum I have to imagine the troops in the chopper that DID get hit might have said something.
lord_blackfang wrote: Respect to the guy who subscribed just to post a massive ASCII dong in the chat and immediately get banned.
Flinty wrote: The benefit of slate is that its.actually a.rock with rock like properties. The downside is that it's a rock
Ouze wrote: .. how were there not, like, dozens of people who would have been present who didn't call shenanigans when this happened? At the very minimum I have to imagine the troops in the chopper that DID get hit might have said something.
Especially 12 years on?
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
Ouze wrote: .. how were there not, like, dozens of people who would have been present who didn't call shenanigans when this happened? At the very minimum I have to imagine the troops in the chopper that DID get hit might have said something.
Яob @robx_d 14h14 hours ago
#BrianWilliamsMemories I remember a time landing in Bosnia and dodging sniper fire with Hillary Clinton. It was harrowing.
Kurt Richards @IAmKurtacus 14h14 hours ago
#BrianWilliamsMemories trying to keep that bus above 55 mph was the hardest thing I've ever done.
AG @AG_Conservative 13h13 hours ago
Correction: I wasn't part of the Tet Offensive. I just ate at a Vietnamese restaurant a few decades later. #BrianWilliamsMemories
jeremy scahill @jeremyscahill 13h13 hours ago
Correction: I didn't storm the beach at Normandy. I just had a friend named Norman. #BrianWilliamsMemories
Marty Lang @marty_lang 13h13 hours ago
Correction: I did not help raise the flag at Iwo Jima, I just dug a hole & installed a flagpole in my front yard. #BrianWilliamsMemories
Avraham Bronstein @AvBronstein 13h13 hours ago
I did not, in fact, witness the Last Supper. In retrospect, I took communion. #BrianWilliamsMemories
If military fabulism weren't so common I would be angrier, as it stands it is just sad. I would think this would sink any credibility he had, as it isn't something you "misremember" for decades, but I have my doubts.
Amidst the mists and coldest frosts he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.
Eh, I sort of sympathize as I've been in a similar situation. Yesterday I had told my coworkers that we had come under a chemical attack, but today I now realize that I just misremembered the consequences of my lunchtime burrito.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/02/05 19:40:53
lord_blackfang wrote: Respect to the guy who subscribed just to post a massive ASCII dong in the chat and immediately get banned.
Flinty wrote: The benefit of slate is that its.actually a.rock with rock like properties. The downside is that it's a rock
Ouze wrote: Eh, I sort of sympathize as I've been in a similar situation. Yesterday I had told my coworkers that we had come under a chemical attack, but today I now realize that I just misremembered the consequences of my lunchtime burrito.
heh...
Speaking of empathy...
Dan Rather Supports Brian Williams: He's an 'Honest, Decent Man' http://t.co/3nWDr6brgN pic.twitter.com/EAXynIc69P
Well, the thing is, I don't think the Dan Rather situation is exactly analogous. As I recall it, Dan Rather and his producers were duped, and they hadn't done their due diligence in vetting their source. Bad reporting, surely, a career ender, probably fair, but not malicious deception as I would say this one is. I mean, we can keep calling it "misremebering", but that's just the polite icing on a bald-faced lie.
lord_blackfang wrote: Respect to the guy who subscribed just to post a massive ASCII dong in the chat and immediately get banned.
Flinty wrote: The benefit of slate is that its.actually a.rock with rock like properties. The downside is that it's a rock
Ouze wrote: Well, the thing is, I don't think the Dan Rather situation is exactly analogous. As I recall it, Dan Rather and his producers were duped, and they hadn't done their due diligence in vetting their source. Bad reporting, surely, a career ender, probably fair, but not malicious deception as I would say this one is. I mean, we can keep calling it "misremebering", but that's just the polite icing on a bald-faced lie.
I was under the impression that Rather continued to try and push his incorrect claims after the evidence did not support it
Ouze wrote: Well, the thing is, I don't think the Dan Rather situation is exactly analogous. As I recall it, Dan Rather and his producers were duped, and they hadn't done their due diligence in vetting their source. Bad reporting, surely, a career ender, probably fair, but not malicious deception as I would say this one is. I mean, we can keep calling it "misremebering", but that's just the polite icing on a bald-faced lie.
I was under the impression that Rather continued to try and push his incorrect claims after the evidence did not support it
"It's fake, but accurate".
That's the line you're looking for...
Maybe not exactly analogous, but definitely two peas in the same fething pod.
Ouze wrote: .. how were there not, like, dozens of people who would have been present who didn't call shenanigans when this happened? At the very minimum I have to imagine the troops in the chopper that DID get hit might have said something.
That's how it works unfortunately.
Could even be that the people who knew better don't watch his show and never heard the claim, I know Id never watch it.
Everytime someone says a big controversy and ends it with gate. I immediately think of just a giant gate, and think to myself oh boy heres another one of those.
I think this is horrible don't get me wrong, but seriously why end it with 'gate'?
From whom are unforgiven we bring the mercy of war.
5000pts 
6000pts 
3000pts
+1
