Pilot Walks Back Memories about Brian Williams; Williams’ Katrina Reporting Questioned Now
I hate to join the chorus of conservatives, but I also think Brian Williams should probably resign or take some time off at least. It’s not quite Dan Rather-level with the fake docs and all, but this is still a pretty bad look for even a newsreader.
Pilot in Brian Williams scandal: ‘I am questioning my memories’
By Brian Stelter, CNN
The pilot I interviewed on Thursday about Brian Williams is no longer standing by his story.
That pilot, Rich Krell, told me he was flying the helicopter Williams was on in Iraq — an account now contradicted by several other soldiers.
On Friday morning, Krell told me that “the information I gave you was true based on my memories, but at this point I am questioning my memories.”
NBC News anchor Brian Williams’ comments about dead bodies, Hurricane Katrina starting to gain attention, draw scrutiny
By John Simerman, NOLA Advocate
NBC News anchor Brian Williams, who apologized on the air Wednesday night for lying about an experience covering the Iraq War, is now facing scrutiny over his gripping accounts of Hurricane Katrina, the disaster that burnished his nightly news bona fides almost a decade ago.
Related story: Brian Williams’ credibility questions after fake Iraq story
Williams’ account of seeing a body float by in the French Quarter — which remained largely dry — and even a claim of catching dysentery from drinking Katrina floodwaters have raised eyebrows among bloggers and elsewhere since he took it on the chin this week over a claim that he rode in a helicopter that was downed by a rocket-propelled grenade in Iraq.
“I was instead in a following aircraft. We all landed after the ground fire incident and spent two harrowing nights in a sandstorm in the Iraq desert,” Williams said Wednesday. He painted his earlier description as a “bungled attempt” to thank an Iraq War veteran.
The online feeding frenzy quickly turned to the 55-year-old anchor’s signature assignment: covering Katrina from before it made landfall, when he spent the night of the storm with refuge-seekers in the Superdome and then reported on the harrowing days that followed.
“When you look out of your hotel window in the French Quarter and watch a man float by face down, when you see bodies that you last saw in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, and swore to yourself that you would never see in your country,” Williams said in a 2006 interview.