The Helicopter Brian Williams Wasn't On
His first report from Iraq was accurate. Over twelve years of retelling it on television, the story slowly moved him into the aircraft that actually got hit.
- First reportNBC Nightly News
"The Chinook ahead of us was almost blown out of the sky"
Williams' own contemporaneous 2003 report was accurate: his helicopter landed roughly an hour after a different Chinook, flying ahead of his group, was hit by rocket and small-arms fire. He was not aboard the aircraft that was hit.
PolitiFact, "Timeline of Brian Williams' statements on Iraqi helicopter attack" ↗ - CorrectionNBC Nightly News / Brian Williams
"I was instead in a following aircraft"
Over years of retellings on NBC and in interviews, the story had grown: by the 2010s Williams was describing the helicopter he was riding in as the one hit and forced down. After he retold that version on air January 30, 2015, soldiers who were actually aboard the aircraft that took fire publicly disputed it. Williams apologized on air and on Facebook, attributing the error to "the fog of memory over 12 years."
NPR, "NBC's Brian Williams Admits His Helicopter Took No Fire In Iraq" ↗ - AftermathNBC News
Williams suspended six months without pay
NBC News president Deborah Turness announced the suspension "for making a false statement." Williams returned to the network months later in a different role, at MSNBC rather than the Nightly News anchor desk.
PBS NewsHour, "NBC suspends anchor Brian Williams six months" ↗
What it teaches
Nobody fed Williams a false account — he told it himself, correctly, the first time. The drift happened one retelling at a time, in front of an audience that had no way to check a war story against the record, until the two people who could check it finally did.