NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams already apologized for his fabricated Iraq War story, but it turns out that he had much more to say about it than previously thought. He actually did a full interview with Stars and Stripes, the site that got the scoop on the truth about his story.
Last Wednesday, Williams apologized on air after Stars and Stripes revealed that Williams was not on a helicopter hit by an RPG during the Iraq War in 2003.
“I would not have chosen to make this mistake,” Williams told Stars and Stripes. “I don’t know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft from the other.”
On Nightly News, Williams called it a “bungled attempt” to honor veteran Tim Terpak, who Williams claimed was on the helicopter that was hit. It has since been revealed that Williams told that lie several times since 2003 and NBC News launched an investigation.
Since Williams cancelled a David Letterman appearance this week, Stars and Stripes has revealed that it conducted a full interview with Williams last week. They didn’t just get that single quote.
In the full interview, Williams insisted that the fabricated story really was a mistake, citing a 2008 blog post in which he said that he was in a helicopter behind the one that was hit. He stressed that this was the first time he was covering the war in Iraq.
“The fact is, I remember three aircraft going down,” Williams explained. “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 professional 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. David Perkins] led his thunder run.”
Williams also told the site he doesn’t want this to hurt Terpak’s reputation. He made it clear that he does work with veterans groups and is “very frustrated by this.”
According to Mediate, Travis Tritten, who conducted the Stars and Stripes interview, told CNN that the full audio wasn’t released until now because Williams cancelled his Letterman appearance to show that Williams did answer more questions about the topic.
image via B. Ach/INFevents.com