Brian Williams certainly hasn’t had the best two weeks. NBC News suspended him for six months without pay after he admitted to “misremembering” his helicopter coming under RPG fire in Iraq, in 2003.
Unfortunately, this week isn’t looking much better for the shamed reporter. Williams has come under fire again over the accuracy of a story he reported as a war correspondent.
Since 2011, Williams claims he was embedded with SEAL Team Six. He further said he developed a close relationship with one of the members of the team.
According to Truth Revolt, Williams mentioned this experience multiple times:
“We have some idea which of our special operations teams carried this out,” Williams said to Letterman May 2, 2011, 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.”
The next night, Williams repeated the claim. “Now, people might be hearing about SEAL Team 6,” he said on the Nightly News. “I happen to have the great honor of flying into Baghdad with them at the start of the war.”
But Hot Air‘s Ed Morrissey, who has been covering the Williams fiasco at length, has spotted inconsistencies in the NBC reporter’s story:
Needless to say, this is not just unlikely, it’s almost certainly untrue as told. The SEAL team had to leave that helicopter behind after destroying it, and loaded up on the only remaining chopper left in the mission to get out. They would have been unlikely to have spent any time picking apart the downed chopper for souvenirs. Besides, the helicopter was destroyed after [original emphasis] SEAL Team 6 had evacuated, which HuffPo confirmed with Special Ops command. The US only got back parts of the aircraft months later from Pakistan’s government, which was embarrassed and outraged by the operation when it became known.
After previous inaccuracies, Williams has fallen under greater scrutiny. It seems unlikely that this new story will simply blow over and leave the anchor unscathed.
Of course, Twitter commentators and pundits have been having a field day mocking Williams’ moments throughout history:
Brian Williams joins ISIS-killing commando force with Jordan's King Abdullah during "few days off" with NBC News. pic.twitter.com/s22qAFg7ok
— MediaResearchCenter (@theMRC) February 8, 2015
Little known fact… Brian Williams was part of the media team at Iwo Jima. pic.twitter.com/obwUeu5kwh
— MediaResearchCenter (@theMRC) February 5, 2015
History in pics: Brian Williams stormed the beach at Normandy on D-Day. Killed 23 Germans and saved Private Ryan. pic.twitter.com/VZ4gRKo5iW
— MediaResearchCenter (@theMRC) February 5, 2015
It looks like the tall tales from Williams are mounting. NBC is going to have to make a decision about whether or not they want that flack associated with their nightly news anchor.
The post ‘Seal Team Six’ Embed? NBC Anchor Brian Williams Blows Up Controversy With Head-Shaking Claim appeared first on Independent Journal.