NBC News anchor Brian Williams tried to explain the mistakes he made in describing his experience on board a helicopter during the 2003 invasion of Iraq in an interview with Stars and Stripes published on Monday.
Williams spoke to Stars and Stripes on Wednesday before additional versions of his story surfaced.
“It was my first engagement of the war and remember I was — we were all I think scared, I have yet to meet the veteran who doesn’t admit to cinching up a little bit when it starts, and it all became a fog of getting down on the ground,” Williams said when asked how he could misremember which aircraft he was riding on.
“I did what a civilian, an untrained civilian, would do in that instance and it was being scared. I think anyone in my shoes would admit that. It could not have been a more foreign environment. All we knew is we had been fired upon. All we knew was we had set down and then with the arrival of the sandstorm, how do we defend our little desert bivouac area,” he continued.
Williams also said the interview with Stars and Stripes was the first he’d heard that the chopper on which he rode was not directly behind the aircraft hit with a rocket propelled grenade.
“That’s the first I’ve heard of that. I did not think we were in trail by that far,” Williams responded when Stars and Stripes reporter Travis Tritten said that, according to crew members, the NBC anchor was not in the same fleet of helicopters that took fire. “But I could not see in front of us and I thought we were just in one flotilla, for lack of a better word. That’s the first time I’ve heard that.”
Williams took himself off air on Saturday amidst growing questions about his reporting and credibility. The newsman admitted that he was not on the helicopter that was hit with an RPG over Iraq in 2003. And since his apology, his reporting on Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006 have also been questioned.
