Midnight Brian Williams Update

The hour is growing late.

Remember, Jake Tapper and Brian Stetler interviewed a pilot named Krell who gave Williams a more helpful narrative. Krell said the chopper did take "small arms fire" (from AK-47's), but most bullets hit the bridges they were towing beneath. He said they did not get hit by any rockets, obviously.

I kind of doubted this guy's tale simply because we already had two guys on the record -- one of them the flight engineer from the chopper -- who had been telling the same story for years, that the chopper took no fire at all.

I will not share with you the full range of my suspicions.

Well, now someone saying he was the pilot of Wiliams' bird says they took no fire at all.

You gotta click on the link, because it is a first-person account by Chris Simeone, the pilot of the "bird" in question.

It's damning.

Pilot of Brian Williams flight: All that hit us was dust

By Chris Simeone

February 5, 2015 | 11:22pm

Pilot of Brian Williams flight: All that hit us was dust

I was the pilot in command of the flight that carried Brian Williams into Iraq in March 2003.

...

After landing, we learned that the parked aircraft had received small-arms fire and had been hit with an RPG on their mission.

...

Brian Williams began to tell the story, from 2003, that the lead aircraft in our flight had received this ground fire.

This was not true.

Brian Williams then began to give account that the aircraft he was traveling on received this ground fire.

This is not true.

Brian Williams reported on the David Letterman show that the "captain" of his aircraft had received a Purple Heart for a wound to the ear. I was the pilot in command of the aircraft carrying Brian Williams. I do not have a Purple Heart, and my ears are just fine.

Chris Simeone, 39, is a retired US Army warrant officer 4. He started his 21-year career in the military prior to the War on Terror but went on to serve during the start of the US invasion of Iraq. He now teaches flight courses for the Army.

What this guy describes is, I think, two flights of two choppers each. The two choppers out in front got hit. The two choppers flying in later did not get hit.

You know, when this began, I was saying that Williams would ride this out, that the media would back him to the hilt, that they would just pretend this never happened.

No.

I was wrong.

It's over.

It gets worse.

Tom Brokaw Wants Williams Fired

...

NBC's most revered journalist is furious that Brian Williams is still in the anchor chair after he sheepishly admitted he hadn’t traveled on a helicopter hit by enemy fire.

"Brokaw wants Williams' head on a platter," an NBC source said. "He is making a lot of noise at NBC that a lesser journalist or producer would have been immediately fired or suspended for a false report."

...

Brokaw, 74, was still the "Nightly News" anchor when Williams came back from his Iraq expedition -- and an insider said he knew the story Williams later spouted was bunk.

"Tom Brokaw and [former NBC News President] Steve Capus knew this was a false story for a long time and have been extremely uncomfortable with it," the source said.

NBC News execs had counseled him to stop telling the tale.

Read it all, it gets worse, but I do not want to keep excerpting so much from the Post. Read it. The ending is a killer.

And it gets even worse.

NBC News anchor Brian Williams' comments about dead bodies, Hurricane Katrina starting to gain attention, draw scrutiny

Williams said he saw floating body in Quarter

JOHN SIMERMAN| JSIMERMAN@THEADVOCATE.COM

Feb. 05, 2015

This is a New Orleans rag, by the way. So they have some local knowledge, which is crucial.

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.

...

"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.

...

But the French Quarter, the original high ground of New Orleans, was not impacted by the floodwaters that overwhelmed the vast majority of the city.

A spokesman for NBC did not immediately respond Thursday to questions about those comments, the hotel to which Williams referred, whether Williams stands by the claims or whether the network is reviewing them.

The article also questions his claims of getting dysentery from New Orleans' water and being molested by gang-bangers in his five-star hotel.

Read it all.

It's over.

The countdown begins.

Brian Williams will separate from NBC by Monday/Tuesday.

End of Days: Et tu, HuffPo?

And the New York Times:

or years, Brian Williams had been telling a story that wasn’t true. On Wednesday night, he took to his anchor chair on “NBC Nightly News” to apologize for misleading the public.

On Thursday, his real problems started....

Rem Rieder, a USA Today media columnist, wrote, "It's hard to see how Williams gets past this, and how he survives as the face of NBC News."

And Even...

In fairness, just because you connect with someone via Twitter, that's not a reason to automatically doubt the person's tale.

Still... you know, I specifically kept asking Stetler and Tapper "Where did you get this guy from? Did you find him, did he find you, or did a third party shop him to you?"

They didn't answer.

Update: A Richard Krell, who was in fact a pilot, apparently was definitely in Iraq with Brian Williams in 2003. I'm told searching on this book for "Krell" will confirm that.

Still, Krell is the only guy who says Brian Williams' helicopter took fire. Even Brian Williams seems to agree his chopper did not take fire.

More: From John E, who speaks of birds.

posted by Ace at 11:58 PM

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