Limbaugh: Media 'circling wagons' for Brian Williams

Brian Williams is "an honest, decent man, an excellent reporter and anchor – and a brave one," veteran newsman Dan Rather told Politico on Thursday.

Rather's note of support comes after the revelation that the NBC newsman has been caught in a lie and forced to recant.

In 2004, Rather was forced to retract a report on George W. Bush's National Guard service after the authenticity of his source documents was called into question. Rather retired from CBS News the following year, ending a 24-year run as anchor of the evening news program.

"I don't know the particulars about that day in Iraq," said Rather. "I do know Brian. He's a longtime friend, and we have been in a number of war zones and on the same battlefields, competing but together."

Williams, the nation's top-rated news anchor, apologized on the air Wednesday evening for fabricating a story of personal heroics, claiming to have been aboard a helicopter in Iraq in 2003 when it was hit by enemy fire.

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"I made a mistake in recalling the events of 12 years ago," Williams said.

Rush Limbaugh reacted to Rather's support for Williams, calling Rather "the last guy I want throwing a party for me."

"They (journalists) circle the wagons, folks. They're gonna be protecting the news. They're gonna be protecting liberalism," said Limbaugh on his top-rated radio show.

At the time Williams reported the original incident, he did not claim to be on the Chinook copter that was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in the rear rotor.

"On the ground, we learn the Chinook ahead of us was almost blown out of the sky," he said in 2003.

His story was no different five years later in a 2008 blog post: "Chinook helicopter flying in front of ours (from the 101st Airborne) took an RPG to the rear rotor."

But something had changed by March 26, 2013, when Williams was a guest on the "Late Show with David Letterman." The news anchor was now in a different helicopter.

Letterman: "Something happened 10 years ago in Iraq, Brian. Tell people what it was. What happened?"

Williams: Two of our four helicopters were hit by ground fire, including the one I was in.

Letterman: No kidding!

Williams: RPG and AK-47.

Letterman: What altitude were you hit at?

Williams: We were only at a hundred feet doing a hundred forward knots because we had these massive pieces of bridge beneath us on slings.

Letterman: What happens the minute everybody realizes you've been hit?

Williams: Uh, we figure out how to land safely, and we did.

Audience: (laughter)

Williams: We landed very quickly and hard, and we put down, and we were stuck. Four birds in the middle of the desert, and we were north out ahead of the other Americans.

Williams: So we got hit. We set down. Everyone was OK. Our captain took a Purple Heart injury to his ear in the cockpit, but we were alone. They started distributing weapons. We heard a noise, and it was Bradley fighting vehicles and Abrams tanks coming. They happened to spot us. They surrounded us for three days and ...

Letterman: You were on the ground, in combat ...

Williams: Yes!

Letterman: ... for three days.

Williams: Unbeknownst to anyone back here. NBC sent my wife and children to The Breakers in Florida to keep their minds off of it and keep them occupied, because no one knew where we were. We couldn't be in touch.

Letterman: I have to treat you now, uhh, with renewed respect. That's a tremendous story.

Williams: We got hit (chuckles), and I came away just with more respect for these men and women.

But it wasn't until last week, when Williams spoke at a New York Rangers hockey game, honoring a retired soldier who had provided security for grounded helicopters in 2003 when the newsman was in Iraq, that the story began to unravel.

"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 recalled. "Our traveling NBC News team was rescued, surrounded and kept alive by an armor mechanized platoon from the U.S. Army 3rd Infantry."

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That's not the way crew members of the 159th Aviation Regiment on board the Chinook copter hit by two rockets and small-arms fire remembered it. The anchor wasn't on their helicopter or the other two Chinooks flying in formation with them, they told Stars & Stripes.

Indeed, the flight engineer on Williams' helicopter, which arrived at the destination west of Baghdad an hour later and was grounded for two days due to a sandstorm, said their flight was not threatened by enemy fire at all.

"No, we never came under direct enemy fire to the aircraft," Sgt. 1st Class Joseph Miller was quoted as saying.

Lance Reynolds, the flight engineer on the helicopter hit that day, took issue with Williams misrepresenting what had been a "life-changing" event for him, saying it "felt like a personal experience that someone else wanted to participate in and didn't deserve to participate in."

Those criticisms from service men and women forced Williams to respond on Facebook.

He wrote:

"I feel terrible about making this mistake, especially since I found my OWN WRITING about the incident from back in '08, and I was indeed on the Chinook behind the bird that took the RPG in the tail housing just above the ramp. ... I think the constant viewing of the video showing us inspecting the impact area – and the fog of memory over 12 years – made me conflate the two, and I apologize.

"The ultimate irony is: In writing up the synopsis of the 2 nights and 3 days I spent with him in the desert, I managed to switch aircraft. Nobody's trying to steal anyone's valor."

And during his Wednesday evening broadcast, Williams issued an apology again:

"On this broadcast last week in an effort to honor and thank a veteran who protected me and so many others after a ground-fire incident in the desert during the Iraq War invasion, I made a mistake in recalling the events of 12 years ago. It did not take long to hear from some brave men and women in the air crews who were also in that desert. 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. We all landed after the ground-fire incident and spent two harrowing nights in a sandstorm in the Iraq desert.

"This 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. I hope they know they have my greatest respect and now my apology."

Noting that Williams was one of the few in the "drive-by-media" who had treated him fairly, Limbaugh said he was uncomfortable criticizing the news anchor and took issue with those calling for NBC to fire him.

"Brian Williams told an abject lie that any number of people at any point the rest of his life could expose – and he didn't just do it once. He did it two, three times. He did it on Letterman, did it on the NBC Nightly News," said Limbaugh.

"You know, I've always liked Brian Williams. ... But, man, I just don't understand. I think one thing to keep in mind here ... You know, people say, 'He ought to have to resign! Brian Williams out to resign!'

"No, no, no, folks. Brian Williams shouldn't have to resign.

"Brian Williams ... There isn't journalism anymore. These people are not journalists. They're not reporters. They're not even news readers! I have a new name for television info-anchors: Narrative readers. They really are there just to read the script of the daily soap opera that is Washington. Whoever determines it, whoever writes it, they are there to advance it. Brian Williams' job every day is to sell a narrative, to get away with whatever he can to move his and the Democratic Party's agenda forward."

Limbaugh concluded:

"This is really not an assault or an insult to journalism, because there really isn't too much journalism going on. But clearly there isn't any journalism at NBC News. We know this. They doctor 9-1-1 calls in the case of George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin, any number of examples like this. Remember, ladies and gentlemen, Dan Rather made up the story about George Bush and the National Guard. He made up all these false documents that were proven instantly by some eagle eyes at a blog to have been totally made up."

The failure of America's top news anchor to separate fact from fiction has overshadowed his apologies and explanations.

Twitter users pounced on the story using the hashtag #BrianWilliamsMisRemembers. Some of the humorous photos accompanying the posts are shown at the end of this story.

A sampling of their comments:

• Of all the things we may mis-remember, getting shot at in a helicopter is not one of them.

• You attack Brian Williams for lying about his helicopter being hit instead of thanking him for killing bin Laden.

• Currently watching Blackhawk down ... Hey , isn't that Brian Williams????

• Walter Cronkite is rolling in his grave. And that's the way it is - February 4th, 2015.

• It was Christmas Eve 1968 and John Kerry and I were in Cambodia listening to Richard Nixon ...

• There I was speaking at the dedication of the Gettysburg Battlefield Cemetery ...

• There are veterans who actually were shot at and never wanted to tell anybody about it. Think about them.

Ironically, Williams covered similar false attack claims made by Hillary Clinton in 1996 while she was first lady.

During her 2008 campaign, Clinton was rebuked for lying about being shot at by a sniper while visiting Bosnia.

In a speech in Washington and in several interviews Clinton claimed she and her daughter, Chelsea, ran for cover under hostile fire shortly after her plane landed.

Several news outlets disputed the claim, and a video of the trip showed Clinton walking from the plane and being greeted by a young girl in a small ceremony on the tarmac.

"I did make a mistake in talking about it, you know, the last time and recently," Clinton told reporters in Pennsylvania where she was campaigning before the state's primary. She said she had a "different memory" about the landing.

Former CBS investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson was traveling with Clinton and shared her recollections about the trip with WPHT in Philadelphia.

“I mean it was a hostile area and they told us there was a slight chance there could be hostilities, but if anybody had shot at us, I mean, it wasn’t any place where she had to be. We would have landed somewhere else if someone was shooting at us. We wouldn’t have landed among sniper fire and ran to a car.

“The video showed, and I thought that this was a pretty good way to explain it — I put her in a box saying ‘we get off the plane and we had to duck and run for cover and there was sniper fire and then I show the video of what was really happening and she’s getting off the plane and she’s waving, shaking hands with a little school girl.”

Clinton's entourage in Bosnia also included comedian Sinbad and singer Sheryl Crow. Hillary referred to it as a "work trip," and Attkisson remembers it as “a lovely thing.”

The following photos were posted on Twitter, featuring Brian Williams Photoshopped into historical moments:

Photo posted on Twitter with caption "When he alone faced the tanks of Tienanmen Square"

Photo posted on Twitter with the caption, "Oswald's bullet barely missed me. I remember it like it was yesterday."

Twitter caption: "He was actually fishing out of a canoe"

Brian Williams with Martin Luther King Jr.

Twitter caption: "Nagging questions remain about the candidate's college transcripts ..."

Twitter caption: "My warnings to FDR unheeded, and reporting live ..."

Brian Williams and his clones in front of the Enola Gay, the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb during World War II

Twitter caption: Brian Williams reporting live from the Declaration of Independence creation

Brian Williams ordering pizza at The Last Supper

Twitter caption: "Brian Williams and his helicopter!"