NEW YORK — In the wake of “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams’ suspension following revelations that he lied about being on a helicopter that took fire in Iraq in 2003, questions are emerging over another of Williams’ Iraq exploits. Among other things, these questions involve war memorabilia the anchor claims to have received as gifts, including a Navy SEAL’s knife and a piece of the helicopter from the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
Starting in 2011, Williams began talking about a 2003 experience with SEAL Team 6, the elite team that killed bin Laden inside Pakistan on May 1, 2011.
“We have some idea which of our special operations teams carried this out,” Williams said on “The Late Show With David Letterman” the day after the raid. “It happens to be a team I flew into Baghdad with, on the condition that I would never speak of what I saw on the aircraft, what aircraft we were on, what we were carrying, or who we were after.”
“Now, people might be hearing about SEAL Team 6,” Williams said the next night, May 3, 2011, on “Nightly News.” “I happen to have the great honor of flying into Baghdad with them at the start of the war.”
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If Williams does own a piece of the fuselage, his repeated references to it in the media raise their own issues. Many details of the bin Laden raid are still highly classified. SEALs involved in the raid who have spoken about it publicly — Matt Bissonette and Robert O’Neill — have faced legal troubles with the Pentagon and a Naval Criminal Investigative Services probe. Even former CIA Director Leon Panetta faced a Defense Department inspector general investigation for leaking details of the raid to the filmmakers behind “Zero Dark Thirty.”
“Shame on him if he was given a piece of helicopter,” said Webb. “By telling the world, he’s basically caused a reason for the inspector general to investigate that command.”
Now that the onus is on Williams to prove the veracity of his war stories, Webb said there is an easy way for the anchor to confirm this one.
“It seems very strange that professional operators are going to take a souvenir off a classified stealth helicopter and then send it to Brian Williams,” he said. “And you know, if Brian wants to re-establish his credibility, let’s have him show us a picture of the piece, let’s see it.”
