Anchor said he was on board helicopter grounded by RPGs in 2003 but apologizes after soldiers refute his story

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

A feel-good news tribute to an Iraq war veteran has turned into a public relations nightmare for NBC News and its chief anchor, Brian Williams, who was forced to retract a story he told on air about coming under fire while traveling in a US army helicopter in Iraq.

Williams was reporting from Iraq in 2003 when US army helicopters were grounded by fire from rocket-propelled grenades – but the news anchor and his team did not arrive until about an hour after the incident, an army sergeant who was there told Stars and Stripes. NBC News had been repeating the false account of the incident for years, the military publication said.

“I would not have chosen to make this mistake,” Williams told Stars and Stripes in retracting his description of the incident. “I don’t know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft with another.”

The controversy arose after NBC News broadcast a public tribute to Command Sergeant Major Tim Terpak, an Iraq veteran who Williams said was in charge of the journalists’ safety at the time of the incident, at a New York Rangers hockey game. Williams attended the game with Terpak.

“The story actually started with a terrible moment a dozen years back during the invasion of Iraq when the helicopter we were traveling in was forced down after being hit by an RPG,” Williams said on the broadcast.

“Our traveling NBC News team was rescued, surrounded and kept alive by an armor mechanized platoon from the US Army 3rd Infantry.”

But this account wasn’t true, as a soldier who was there pointed out to Williams on Facebook.

Anthony De Rosa (@AntDeRosa) Soldier confronts NBC’s Brian Williams on Facebook about his war story, Williams responds https://t.co/zq09UJFNBy pic.twitter.com/RjduFPcWtP

NBC News did not immediately return calls for comment, but the anchor addressed the controversy on Wednesday’s broadcast.



NBC Nightly News (@NBCNightlyNews) Brian Williams: 'In an Effort to Honor and Thank a Veteran, I Made a Mistake' http://t.co/UVXXYg2HPJ

“I made a mistake in recalling the events of 12 years ago,” Williams said during his on-air apology.



“I want to apologize. I said I was traveling in an aircraft that was hit by RPG fire. I was instead in a following aircraft.”



The hashtag #chopperwhopper appeared on Twitter over Wednesday night, with questions raised about whether Williams could stay in his job after the controversy.

Lance Reynolds, the flight engineer on the helicopter that was hit, told Stars and Stripes: “It was something personal for us that was kind of life-changing for me. I know how lucky I was to survive it.



“It felt like a personal experience that someone else wanted to participate in and didn’t deserve to participate in.”

Williams said the story was “a bungled attempt by me to thank one special veteran and by extension our brave military men and women, veterans everywhere, those who have served while I did not.”

During her 2008 presidential run, then-senator Hillary Clinton also had to retract a story she had told about “landing under sniper fire” on a trip to Bosnia in 1996. That too never happened.