At this point, much of the stories revolve around other people’s memories. There may be some records, but there aren’t any records about what Brian Williams experienced or how traumatized he was by the experience that may have confused different memories.
But he’s not the only one. A military person came forward during the controversy, initally saying that he piloted the aircraft that Williams was flying in that was being fired upon. After being confronted by other people in the military who relayed the story differently, that person recanted.
Before retracting his recollection, Krell stated to a journalist:
If people are looking to find other people to bolster their stories, it’s probably possible to find one, depending on how the wind of the political and social climate is blowing.
Is that how it worked in Iraqi airspace, during that war? One copter gets hit by an RPG, then another travelling within the hour over the same route is at zero risk?
How did that Clearing and declaration of Positively Safe work?
Those making statements of this sort seem to be picturing the getting “shot with an RPG” as some dramatic vaporizing of a significant chunk of the helicopter and then a fiery crash. Certainly such a thing would be memorable.
There’s some ripped-up metal in one bit of the copter. No doubt there was a shock of impact, and no doubt it was noisy. But other copters flying through the same territory were unlikely to be smooth and silent. There was, apparently, a sandstorm–any copter flying that route would have been noisy and lurching about.
It really doesn’t look as clear-cut as some are claiming (that a passenger would have known for certain what had happened).
I don’t admire Brian Williams’ obvious tendency to make a story “better.” He’s clearly long been in the habit of burnishing his image as Real Journalist–no mere desk jockey, he! What a guy! What a courageous reporter! Etc.
But, face it: no one gets the job of being a network anchor/managing editor without having a pretty notable talent for self-promotion. If we want Stars reading our news, then we are going to get people with Star personality traits. We are going to get showboats. We are going to get people who make a good story “better.”
Trauma might be too heavy a word. “Excitement” might be better, but that’s not heavy enough, I think. My understanding is he flew through a war zone in a helicopter, an hour behind a helicopter that was hit by an RPG. It’s possible as he was flying that people were talking about the helicopter that had been hit. Then he landed in a place near the hit helicopter and saw a bunch of tanks nearby. There’s an eensy chance that tensions were high and a smidgen of a chance that he was concerned for his own safety during that time, and that these emotional memories have been confused.
Right, but that is usually after hours of intense, high pressure interrogation accusing them of committing the crime, and after hours of denial. Nobody put this bug in Brian Williams’ head. I don’t think the analogy is apt.
Well, we have Williams’ own words and his admission that in '08 he wrote that he was in a chopper behind the one that was fired upon. The thing that strikes me the most is that he must have gone home and told his family what happened. I’m surprised that they didn’t remember what was told to them…assuming he told his family initially that he was in the chopper behind the one that was fired upon.
This aspect has puzzled me. Williams was part of an NBC news crew aboard that helicopter, all of whom knew the truth about what happened. So why was no one saying anything when he started offering fanciful versions of the incident?
It was a Chinook. I’ve flown in a Chinook. I laughed my ass reading this because smooth and silent has no correlation to Chinooks. He would have been wearing hearing protection just to deal with routine noise. He wouldn’t have been able to effectively talk to anyone except via intercom (if he and that other person even had a headset.) Even flying straight and level in clear skies the experience is kind of like riding in the back of a dumptruck due to the shake from the twin rotors. Chinooks are big, loud, shaky, and leaky things.
I’ve seen anti-tank weapons firing and exploding in person. The effect isn’t Hollywood flashy but it’s still relatively dramatic. If nothing else the sudden light through the new “window” into the mostly dark confines is a hint that something bad happened. I could still see not knowing what happened as a piece of meat riding in the back of that big shaky can.
Like others have said, memory is notoriously faulty. There are tales of me in college that are (IMO) inflated, with me picking someone up by their shirt, etc… I don’t remember doing that at all- I do remember grabbing the guy by the front of his shirt, and he was definitely quite a bit smaller than I was, but I don’t remember any effort to pick him up.
However, several of my friends swear in all seriousness that I lifted him off the ground while reading him the riot act (I was a RA).
Who’s right? I don’t remember it- all I remember was this clown doing something disruptive and annoying, and confronting him in an intimidating way, and my friends swear I lifted him off the ground and threatened him. Nobody was drunk, it wasn’t that late at night, and we weren’t under undue stress at the time.
It’s really easy for me to believe that Brian Williams’ helicopter might have been under small arms fire (what he said until the most recent statement) and landed with the helicopter hit by the RPG, and he got it mixed up and assumed that HIS helicopter was the one that was hit. Considering that his memories were probably jumbled by stress, jet lag and whatever else, plus 12 years of intervening time, it’s not unlikely that at best, he wouldn’t remember it exactly, and that at worst, he’d have it completely wrong.
We hear all the time of false memories during a terrifying moment in someone’s life, and they jump up and down swearing that it was true, it happened. Maybe he suffered a moment of “delusions of grandeur”.
A couple weeks off the air and all will subside, and everyone will forget when the next “big story” comes along. We (the general public) seem to be like this nowadays.
If he stays on the air, the ratings will tell the story.
Thanks–based on things I’ve heard I felt safe in assuming that “smooth and silent” couldn’t have been the case, but it’s good to have the verification about Chinooks.
This makes sense, but I will say that the photo makes it look as though the RPG hit wasn’t through the cabin. Can’t tell for certain, though.
For me the bottom line is that it would NOT necessarily have been clear-cut for a passenger that an RPG had impacted the copter (particularly if the impact hadn’t been through the cabin wall).
Yet it’s still the case that Williams was self-serving in his “modest” accounts of what he’d been through. In 2003 he truly was reporting from a dangerous place, and he may genuinely have come to believe that his copter had been hit. But even if he believed his memories were accurate, he should have double-checked the details before making his claims. His conduct was self-aggrandizing and unattractive in any public figure (and that goes, too, for Ronald Reagan, Hillary Clinton, and anyone else guilty of ‘improving’ their stories).
