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NBC’s Brian Williams recants Iraq story after soldiers protest
‘I spent much of the weekend thinking I’d gone crazy. I feel terrible about making this mistake’
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“To Joseph, Lance, Jonathan, Pate, Michael and all those who have posted: You are absolutely right and I was wrong.
In fact, I spent much of the weekend thinking I’d gone crazy. I feel terrible about making this mistake, especially since I found my OWN WRITING about the incident from back in ’08, and I was indeed on the Chinook behind the bird that took the RPG in the tail housing just above the ramp.
Because I have no desire to fictionalize my experience (we all saw it happened the first time) and no need to dramatize events as they actually happened, I think the constant viewing of the video showing us inspecting the impact area — and the fog of memory over 12 years — made me conflate the two, and I apologize.
I certainly remember the armored mech platoon, meeting Capt. Eric Nye and of course Tim Terpak. Shortly after they arrived, so did the Orange Crush sandstorm, making virtually all outdoor functions impossible. I honestly don’t remember which of the three choppers Gen. Downing and I slept in, but we spent two nights on the stowable web bench seats in one of the three birds.
Later in the invasion when Gen. Downing and I reached Baghdad, I remember searching the parade grounds for Tim’s Bradley to no avail. My attempt to pay tribute to CSM Terpak was to honor his 23+ years in service to our nation, and it had been 12 years since I saw him.
The ultimate irony is: In writing up the synopsis of the 2 nights and 3 days I spent with him in the desert, I managed to switch aircraft. Nobody’s trying to steal anyone’s valor. Quite the contrary: I was and remain a civilian journalist covering the stories of those who volunteered for duty. This was simply an attempt to thank Tim, our military and Veterans everywhere — those who have served while I did not.”
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.
UPDATE | Williams’ apology leaves out key details of Iraq incident
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.”
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.
WASHINGTON — Apologies by NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams for a false claim of being on a helicopter forced down by Iraqi rocket fire in 2003 satisfied some soldiers who were there but left a few insisting that details were still misrepresented.
Williams admitted on air Wednesday that he was not aboard a Chinook struck by hostile fire on a flight from Kuwait in March 2003, saying instead he was aboard a “following aircraft.”
In a Facebook apology to the soldiers, Williams said, “I was indeed on the Chinook behind the bird that took the RPG.” He blamed the discrepancy on poor memory almost 12 years after the fact.
Since the 2003 incident, Williams has said on different occasions that he “came under fire” and that his helicopter was forced down due to the attack. Former and active-duty soldiers who were on the same mission had said the anchor’s aircraft landed in the Karbala area because of a blinding sandstorm and not hostile fire.
Williams’ admission and his insistence that he had made an innocent mistake drew sharp criticism on social media, which subjected the veteran newsman to enormous ridicule, including posts depicting him in other historical events.
Among those who were part of the mission, reaction was less intense.
“I have a feeling that he didn’t have a choice [but to apologize],” said David Luke, a former soldier and flight engineer with the 159th Aviation Regiment who was aboard a helicopter flying along with the one carrying Williams and his NBC crew.
Luke said he thought the apology came only because soldiers challenged Williams’ version and otherwise, “he would have told that war story until he was on his dying bed.”
Mike O’Keeffe, who was a door gunner on the Chinook hit by RPGs, said he was generally satisfied with the apology and no longer wanted to press the issue by making public comments.
“I understand your interest and very much appreciate you getting the truth out there, but from my perspective, Mr. Williams has been outed and has enough to deal with,” O’Keeffe wrote in an email to Stars and Stripes. “Guess I just don’t want to kick the guy when he is down. Though he wordsmithed his apology to downplay what he did, he did recant and I am satisfied.”
Williams’ admission was an embarrassment for the veteran journalist who has been the face of NBC News since he became anchor for its main news show in 2004. NBC has not said whether he will face discipline for perpetuating a false story.
Despite Williams’ effort to contain the damage, some former soldiers thought there were still discrepancies between his account and their own memory of the events.
Luke said it was “misleading” for Williams to say his aircraft was following the stricken Chinook. Luke told Stars and Stripes that Williams’ Chinook was headed south, back toward Kuwait, when it passed another formation from a separate aviation company flying north.
After the two formations passed each other, Luke’s crew heard on the radio that a northbound aircraft had been hit by RPG and small-arms fire, presumably from gunmen in a white pickup truck they had seen minutes earlier. Soon after the attack, Luke said his helicopter and the one carrying Williams were forced to change course because of the sandstorm and land near a makeshift supply camp — Rams Base — where the stricken helicopter had also put down.
Stars and Stripes compiled its account of what happened to the two helicopter companies that day — one based in Germany and the other in Savannah, Ga. — through interviews with five soldiers who were there, including a mission commander, retired Army officer Jerry Pearman of California who was a lieutenant colonel at the time.
Their account, however, was disputed by another former Chinook pilot, Rich Krell, who told CNN that he was flying Williams’ aircraft during the mission. Krell told CNN that Williams’ plane did suffer minor damage from small-arms fire but did not say the damage was enough to force him to land.
“Yeah, he messed up some things and said some things he shouldn’t have,” Krell told CNN, referring to Williams.
Krell’s version was at odds with the recollections of both Luke and Sgt. 1st Class Joseph Miller, who was the flight engineer on the aircraft carrying Williams and his crew. Miller and Luke insisted separately that aircraft in their formation did not take ground fire that day and landed in Iraq only because of the sandstorm, which paralyzed coalition operations for days.
“No, we never came under direct enemy fire to the aircraft,” Miller told Stars and Stripes on Wednesday.
Miller said the NBC crew affixed microphones to a helicopter headset and recorded air traffic from the Chinook that had been hit.
Luke said that after the formation carrying the NBC crew landed at Rams Base, Williams and the soldiers approached the stricken helicopter to ask the crew what had happened.
They all ended up spending two or three days stranded at Rams Base until the sandstorm passed and helicopter flights could resume.
tritten.travis@stripes.com
Twitter: @Travis_Tritten
A shifting story
How the 2003 Chinook incident has been recounted at various times. Move your mouse over them (or tap if you’re on a mobile device) to make corresponding portions stand out.
March 24, 2003 | Book accountMarch 27, 2003 | New York Daily News reportMarch 30, 2003 | USA Today reportJuly 19, 2007 | From Brian Williams’ blog entry on Gen. Wayne DowningJan. 14, 2010 | News release from the University of Notre DameMarch 4, 2013 | Interview on ‘Here’s the Thing’ radio showMarch 26, 2013 | Late Show with David Letterman appearanceJan. 30, 2015 | NBC Nightly News report |
In a letter to his mother from Sean Ward, who guarded a shot-down Chinook puts the shot-down Chinook and Brian Williams in same spot (“middle of Iraq, south of the Euphrates river”), but does not mention of Williams being in the shot down Chinook. “NBC News’ Brian Williams … and NBC consultant Ret. Gen. Wayne Downing went on a helicopter mission to an Iraq site where troops were building a bridge. However, during the trip a man on the ground pulled a tarp off of his pickup truck and launched a rocket-fired grenade. The first chopper was hit and forced to land. Then the one carrying Williams and Downing landed.
“NBC’s Brian Williams was stranded in the Iraqi desert for three days after a Chinook helicopter ahead of his was attacked by a man who fired a rocket-propelled grenade. The grenade just missed, but it forced the group to make an emergency landing. Luckily, a U.S. tank platoon was there and surrounded the helicopters, killing four Iraqis. “[Downing] talked me into going on a “day trip” with an Army Reserve Unit — a flotilla of four twin-rotor Chinook helicopters on a mission we couldn’t discuss. [Soon] some men on the ground fired an RPG through the tail rotor of the chopper flying in front of ours. There was small arms fire. … All four choppers dropped their heavy loads and landed quickly and hard on the desert floor. …” “Just days into the war, Williams was traveling on a U.S. Army Chinook helicopter mission when the lead helicopter was shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade. Williams spent three days and two nights in the Iraqi desert south of Najaf, with a mechanized armored tank platoon of the Army’s Third Infantry Division providing protection.” On “Here’s the Thing” public radio show on WNYC, host Alec Baldwin is talking about confidence and success: Williams: I guess I do say, to myself and others, “I got this.” On the “Late Show with David Letterman, Williams recounts being farther north than the invading American troops, carrying bridge sections for U.S forces to use to cross the Euphrates River” Williams: “Two of the four helicopters were hit, by ground fire, including the one I was in –“ “The story actually started with a terrible moment a dozen years back during the invasion of Iraq, when the helicopter we were travelling in was forced down after being hit by an RPG. Our travelling NBC news team was rescued and kept alive by an Armored Mechanized Platoon from the U.S. Army 3rd Infantry |