NEW YORK -– NBC News anchor Brian Williams admitted Wednesday night that he was not riding in a helicopter hit by rocket-propelled grenade fire in Iraq, as he had claimed, but now the media are picking over his shifting accounts of the incident over the last decade.
Williams apologized on air Wednesday night for falsely claiming in a “Nightly News” segment five days earlier that he had been aboard a helicopter that was struck by an RPG and forced to land in late March 2003 during the earliest days of the U.S. invasion.
“On this broadcast last week, in an effort to honor and thank a veteran who protected me and so many others after a ground-fire incident in the desert during the Iraq War invasion, I made a mistake in recalling the events of 12 years ago,” Williams said. “It did not take long to hear from some brave men and women in the air crews who were also in that desert. I want to apologize.”
He clarified Wednesday that he had been in a helicopter following the one hit by an RPG. He recalled how his NBC News team and the air crew next “spent two harrowing nights in a sandstorm in the Iraq desert,” a detail that is not in dispute.
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But in a few March 2013 media appearances, a decade after the invasion, Williams’ account became more harrowing.
On March 4, he told Alec Baldwin, on the actor’s radio show, that he was once “in a helicopter I had no business being in in Iraq with rounds coming into the airframe.” When Baldwin asked if he thought he might die, Williams responded, “Briefly, sure.”
Later that month, he recounted the story to David Letterman, saying that “two of our four helicopters were hit by ground fire, including the one I was in — RPG and AK-47.”
On Jan. 30 of this year, Williams recalled on the “Nightly News” that the “helicopter we’re traveling in was forced down after being hit by an RPG.” The segment was offering tribute to Sgt. Tim Terpack, who led the platoon that protected the NBC News crew in the desert that day. Williams and Terpack were shown at a New York Rangers game while the arena announcer described how the anchor’s “Chinook helicopter was hit and crippled by enemy fire.”
If Williams is stressed about the controversy, he isn’t showing it. Shortly after apologizing Wednesday evening, he was back at Madison Square Garden, cheering on the Rangers alongside Tom Hanks.
