At about 2:40 this afternoon, Stars and Stripes published a "full transcript of the Feb. 4 (Wednesday) interview in which the anchor admits he was never on the attacked helicopter and claims he was unaware his flight was not directly behind but actually far from the company that was hit."
Williams, in admitting that his flight was far from the company that was hit, is acknowledging that the statement he made that very evening on his Nightly News broadcast — that "I was instead in a following aircraft" — was false, and misled his viewers into believing he was near the dangers involved. Also unaddressed are the following items among many which have arisen since that interview: whether even the original 2003 broadcasts from the anchor's time in Iraq were misleading from the start; how, in the circumstances supposedly just clarified, Williams could have told a college journalist in 2007 that he "looked down the tube of an RPG that had been fired at us"; and other questionable items relating to other stories which have since surfaced. Excerpts from the interview with Travis J. Tritten of Stars and Stripes follow the jump (bolds are mine):
In his words: Brian Williams’ interview with Stars and Stripes
... Stars and Stripes is publishing a full transcript of the Feb. 4 interview in which the anchor admits he was never on the attacked helicopter and claims he was unaware his flight was not directly behind but actually far from the company that was hit.
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Stars and Stripes reporter Travis J. Tritten: Speaking to these guys today they all told me they don’t understand how you could make a mistake like this. It is the opening of the war, the first week of the invasion. These are memories that are seared into people’s minds. There’s all this buildup to the war. And all of them told me they couldn’t understand how you could misremember what aircraft you were on or whether your aircraft was hit, so I’m just wondering how that could happen?
Brian Williams: Same reasoning in reverse. 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, what do we do now, taking our direction from the air crews — I’m traveling with a retired four-star general — and then the arrival of the armored ‘mech’ platoon. So, a professional will look at this differently. They do into a kind of hyper-drive. 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.
Tritten: I had multiple guys tell me that they remember immediately after this the news coverage — this was within days of it — that you and NBC had reported that you were on the aircraft in those first broadcasts. So, is that not true?
Williams: On which aircraft?
Tritten: On the aircraft that was hit.
Williams: No, I think I correctly reported as I did in my blog in ’08 that I was on the aircraft behind the one that was hit. It was not … Because I knew we had all come under fire, I guess I had assumed that all of the airframes took some damage because we all went down. Also, remember, adding to the fear of the moment was the fact that we unhooked, our load master let loose a huge, our cargo, so you go through this over-torque where you rise in the air before you settle, despite what was some dandy piloting by the crews of all three aircraft. It was like landing on the surface of the moon. And I’m going to have a far different recollection than the professionals. These are the guys, and I think maybe you know more than I do — Was it a mixture of Big Windy [Company] out of Germany and Air National Guard from the States? Because that is what I recall.
Tritten: From Savannah, yeah, that is correct and what I was told my one of the crew members who was actually on your Chinook was that you guys were an hour behind this grouping of three Chinooks that were out in the front, and those three Chinooks out in the front came under fire and the middle one was hit.
Williams: And that’s the first I’ve heard of that. I did not think we were in trail by that far. I think that’s probably a good question for Tim , who I now learn witnessed the overflight. 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.
Tritten: So, you are going to provide that explanation to these guys [posted last week on Facebook] that you had read to me —
Williams: Yeah.
Tritten: Are you guys going to do anything on the air to kind of correct the record?
Williams: I don’t know; I’ll talk to my boss. I am certainly willing. I did not, again … It’s very basic I would not have chosen to make this mistake. I don’t know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft from the other. The fact is, I remember three aircraft going down. I was on one of them. An additional aircraft aside from ours took an RPG through the rear housing above the ramp. And it was our first engagement of the war, a trip that eventually brought me to downtown Baghdad. And this is what I said to you earlier, my war experience in no way matches that of the professionals soldiers we were traveling with, and though we certainly had a variety of experiences from the airport road into Baghdad to Baghdad itself, after Col. Perkins led his thunder run.
(Williams asks to go off the record, briefly, then goes back on the record.)
... Tritten: So, I am just wondering if you had discussed this with Terpak, this kind of controversy and what these guys have come out and said.
Williams: I have expressed my frustration that this is in some way going to take, going to soil what I attempted to do for him. Yes, I am very frustrated by this. Look, I deal with a lot of veterans groups and a lot of veterans. I’ve made it my business since we came back from OIF [Operation Iraqi Freedom] and because I didn’t serve myself -- I’m the son of a U.S. Army captain in the World War II era -- and I just, anything that takes attention away from him [Terpak], anything that ends up not honoring the veterans is a failure on my part. ...
If the network really wants to, it seems that NBC could clear the matter of the actual content of those 2003 broadcasts the soldiers are questioning pretty quickly. It's arguably telling that they haven't done that, and that the silence over other matters (e.g., Katrina, Hezbollah rockets) continues.
Unanswered exit question: Was the February 4 Stars and Stripes interview before or after the February 4 Nightly News broadcast? If before, it would mean that Williams knew beyond doubt how far he was behind those who were hit, and that his false statement about "following" can only be seen as premeditated prevarication.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
