Brian Williams did it all for the soldiers, you see. His chopper whoppers were patriotic acts. “This was a bungled attempt by me to thank one special veteran,” he explained.
In a similar vein, Anthony Weiner’s sexting was really just a misunderstood celebration of the technological sophistication of smartphones, and Bill Clinton’s dalliance with Monica Lewinsky was a selfless way to promote that great American company the Gap.
What Williams’ lie was about was what lies are always about: No one who actually scored the winning touchdown on the high-school football team misremembers it as sitting on the bench. The term “fish tale” does not mean you mistakenly tell people you caught a sickly 8-ounce catfish when actually you snagged a 95-pound monster marlin.
Williams originally told the truth about what happened in 2003 Iraq: He was on a Chinook helicopter. Another helicopter was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG). His helo was nowhere near the one that was struck and landed some 30 or more minutes later. That isn’t a near-miss; that’s just rubbernecking at something you didn’t even know happened until you came along later.
Joseph Miller, who says he was the flight engineer on Williams’ helo, said Williams was excited from the beginning, immediately spinning a what-if story: “He had the audacity to tell me the whole thing was like ‘Saving Private Ryan’ and that the whole Army would be out looking for him,” Miller said, adding, “I called him an idiot in front of his camera crew.”
Hey, NBC, do your job for a change: Let’s see that footage. It’ll be the newsiest stuff you run all week.
In 2013, Williams marveled at his own bravery, telling Alec Baldwin on WNYC radio that he thought he was going to die when the imaginary grenade hit his helo. “I guess I do say to myself and to others — ‘I’ve got this’ — and I don’t know where that unbridled confidence comes from.”
Gee, that doesn’t really sound like the “Saving Private Ryan” freakout Miller described.
Part of Williams’ self-delusion is that he’s some sort of ordinary Joe in touch with the real America. He nudges profiles to describe him as a “blue-collar Jersey guy.” His dad was an executive, not a coal miner. He fancies himself as in tune with the working men as he collects $10 million a year for successfully looking “troubled” or “sincere” or “amused” while reading 20 minutes of script off a prompter.
NBC, which had several other employees on the Chinook who apparently narked on Williams because nobody can stand this classic self-promoting ass (“He’s a real pompous piece of s–t,” a longtime colleague told Page Six), warned him from the beginning not to embellish the truth, and a source told Variety with pride that Williams’ tall tale was never featured on an NBC News program.
So he peddled his yarn elsewhere, gradually making himself sound more devil-may-care, to the point where, in a 2013 appearance on “Late Show” that Williams apparently timed for the 10th anniversary of his Iraq stint so he’d have an excuse to talk about it, he didn’t contradict David Letterman’s description of him as a “war hero.”
We should have known he was lying then; actual heroes hate being called heroes.
By his own account, Williams is a little confused in the head. He said, “I don’t know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft with another,” and “I spent most of the weekend thinking I’d gone crazy,” and “I would not have chosen to make this mistake,” implying that some entity other than he was responsible. Was it mind control? Schizophrenia? Someone get Brian a tinfoil hat to block those gamma rays!
If Williams remains on NBC, it will be impossible for him to report on the military. Every time NBC News calls him (as its president did in December) “one of the most trusted journalists of our time,” Twitter and Facebook will detonate with reminders to the contrary. Williams sits on the board of the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation. Probably he’ll be forced to resign from that.
Does NBC News need that embarrassment?
In the military, bragging about the courageous stuff you didn’t do is known as theft of valor. “Nobody is trying to steal anyone’s valor,” Williams insisted. Oh. OK, then. Tell that to all the military heroes whose stories haven’t been told.