NBC’s Brian Williams is Forced to Admit His Tale of Being on a Downed Helicopter in Iraq Was Pure Fantasy

Screen Shot 2015-02-04 at 3.45.27 PMNBC 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.

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.

– From Stars and Stripes article: NBC’s Brian Williams Recants Iraq Story After Soldiers Protest

Just in case you still harbor any doubt that mainstream media is nothing but a pathetic amalgamation of useless liars and propagandists…

Enter NBC’s star reporter Brian Williams. A man apparently so vain and attention starved that he actually invented a war story from 2003 to make himself look tougher. Then he continued to tell the false narrative until U.S. soldiers called him out on it.

What an complete and total embarrassment.

From Stars and Stripes:

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.”

I don’t know what screwed up either, as it seems pretty hard to mistake having your helicopter hit with an RPG versus…not.

Remember, these are the people who shape the news for tens of millions of unsuspecting, ignorant Americans.

“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.

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.

“It was something personal for us that was kind of life-changing for me. I’ve 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.

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.”

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.”

Next you’re going to tell me there were no WMDs in Iraq.

The following remains one of the best videos of all time:

I mean, do these guys tell the truth about anything?

For related articles, see:

This is How the U.S. Government Convinces a Newspaper to Kill a Story

“Non-Official Cover” – Respected German Journalist Blows Whistle on How the CIA Controls the Media

Julian Assange Discusses Mainstream Media, the “Wikileaks Party” and our Global Awakening

In Liberty,
Michael Krieger

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7 thoughts on “NBC’s Brian Williams is Forced to Admit His Tale of Being on a Downed Helicopter in Iraq Was Pure Fantasy”

  1. He seems like the perfect guy to cover oligarch Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2006. She can tell him ludicrously false stories about being under gunfire in Serbia, I think it was, and he can spin this abjectly false helicopter story.

    Reply
  2. I’ve seen a lot of misuses of the word conflate lately. Many folks seem to be using it as a cooler-sounding synonym for confuse, as in “don’t conflate political ambition with political knowledge.”

    I have to quote Inigo here: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” (The Princess Bride)

    According to my trusty Merriam-Webster (11th edition), this is the definition of conflate:

    “conflate (vt): to combine or mix (two variant readings into a single text, etc.)”

    And here’s the definition of confuse:

    “confuse (vt): 1) to mix up; jumble together; put into disorder 2) to mix up mentally; specif. a) to bewilder, perplex b) to embarrass; disconcert c) to fail to distinguish between; mistake the identity of”
    (both definitions from p. 306)

    Notice the subtle (or not so subtle?) difference here. Confuse means just what everyone thinks it means. If you confuse A with B, it means you don’t know the difference between them, or you think they’re the same thing. Conflate, on the other hand, doesn’t mean what one might expect. If you conflate A with B, it means you combine them and come up with something that’s related to both, but different from either.

    If you’re trying to say that someone has mistaken X for Y, then you need to say that the person has confused X and Y. Use conflate only when you mean that someone has taken multiple (slightly different) statements and combined them into one.

    Source:
    .blogspot.com/2008/09/usage-tip-conflate-vs-confuse.html?m=1

    Turns out old Brian is just full of shit…

    Who knew?

    (Like maybe EVERYONE ON THE FUCKING PLANET !!!)

    Reply
  3. Anyone who cares to be aware at this moment in history should be amply cognizant that the entire tottering superstructure of bullshit that feebly supports the government/media/finance/corporate “experience” is in a slo-mo collapse. Brian Williams didn’t misremember his combat experience, he misplaced his sense of personal ethics. The fact that he thought someone of his high profile could blithely ignore reality with no one else noticing provides clear evidence it is not just brazenness that plagues these people; it has morphed into sociopathy.

    One should watch mainstream media news with the same expectation one would use in viewing televangelists soaked in crocodile tears, their wives bedecked in pink bouffants: It is absolutely astounding what total, unalloyed bullshit people will lap up when someone claims authority. As Bill Bonner likes to say, people get what the deserve, good and hard.

    Reply
  4. Williams is paid big bucks to lie daily to the American people. What surprises is that he is so stupid to think he could get away with such a lie.

    Reply
  5. Brian Williams makes me “ill and angry,” to borrow the words of David McCallum on “The Outer Limits” 1960s sci-fi series. Nearly every day he has Nancy Snyderman coming on to rattle away about how vaccines support the turning of the earth. You’ll wait till the Sahara is green before she ever mentions her previous employer—Johnson & Johnson—vaccine manufacturer. This duo makes you feel “like ants crawling all over your body” to borrow a phrase from chief engineer Montgomery Scott on “Star Trek.”

    Reply

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