Another video has surfaced of NBC anchorman Brian Williams claiming he was fortunate to survive enemy attacks, this time in two different wars.
In 2007, Williams was interviewed by a student at Fairfield University. He said:
At a reception a few minutes ago, I was remembering something I tend to forget, the war with Hezbollah in Israel, a few years back, where there were Katyushka rockets passing just beneath the helicopter I was riding in. A few years before that, you go back to Iraq, and I looked down the tube of an RPG that had been fired at us and it hit the chopper in front of ours.
This version of the incident is a less humble telling of his 2003 Dateline NBC story about being in an Army helicopter formation in Iraq that came under fire. By last week the story had grown into a tale of how the rocket propelled grenade hit the chopper he was in. This week, Williams backed off that claim and said the RPG hit a chopper ahead of his. Other soldiers insist he was nowhere near the shooting and could not have possibly seen it. Williams has repeated various versions of the Iraq story on David Letterman, in his blog and most recently on NBC Nightly News a week ago.
Friday NBC announced it was opening an internal review of the matter and Saturday Williams announced he would take some days off the anchor desk. He did not say what he would be doing while he was gone.
The story he told that college student of the Hezbollah rockets passing just below him will likely also come under scrutiny. Like the RPG attack, Williams has told this story before. For example, in this interview with Jon Stewart: (go to 5:03 on the video) in which Williams said the military chopper in which he was riding with a four-star general was 1500 feet above Hezbollah rockets flying below him.
Williams ended the segment chiding Stewart, “Anytime you want to cross over to the other side baby, travel with me.”
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