Brian Williams Affair: Reagan and Bush Lied about Military Records but They Get a Pass

Juan Cole is Director of the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the University of Michigan. He maintains a blog on US foreign policy and progressive politics, Informed Comment. His newest book is, The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation Is Changing the Middle East (Simon and Schuster).

NBC nightly news anchor Brian Williams is under fire for repeatedly having told an embellished story of being in a Chinook helicopter that took RPG and small arms fire at the beginning of the Iraq War and was forced down. His critics, and military personnel present on the four helicopters then flying in a convoy or nearby, largely dispute his account, saying Williams arrived an hour after the Chinook that had been forced down.  One eyewitness did confirm to CNN that the helicopter he and Williams were on took AK 47 fire (he is contradicted by his colleagues). Williams has in any case withdrawn the anecdote, though he played down how often he had told it.

Williams’ critics accuse him of just making stuff up, and for all I know he did. But we all know that stories grow in the telling, and it isn’t impossible that over time Williams’ memory played tricks on him. If his helicopter did in fact take some light arms fire, as a soldier present on it alleges, that is a kernel of experience for Williams’s later faulty memory. It is also suggested that the story of what happened to the lead Chinook was broadcast inside Williams’s own helicopter and that he may have lived it vicariously and then over time inserted himself into the story.

In any case, those who haven’t risked their lives in a war zone (which is what Williams did) maybe shouldn’t be so glib in condemning someone who did. His story is false; the danger was real. The anger and feeling of betrayal of the military personnel on the helicopter that was hit, on the other hand, is understandable, though at least one of them says he is ready to move on.


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