Brian Williams and Mendacity: Everybody Lies
When I entered the U.S. Foreign Service a few years after the fall of Saigon, I was astounded by the number of veteran diplomats who claimed to have been on "the last helicopter out" of the beleaguered South Vietnamese capital. My young self was initially impressed with the bravery and derring-do of these stalwart public servants. But my awe turned to skepticism as the number making such a claim swelled seemingly into the hundreds. It appeared as if every other Tom, Dick and Jane in the State Department had been on that Noah's Ark of a chopper evacuating the last Americans from our embassy rooftop. Eventually, I began to doubt whether some of those who'd claimed to have "served in Vietnam" actually had even stepped foot in the country.
Several years later, a colleague regaled me with a tale of having been seized at gunpoint by communist Lao militia, held in spare quarters under armed guard, and ordered to sign a "confession" that he had engaged in activities threatening the security of the revolutionary government. "Wait a minute," I said. "That happened to me. You read my cable on the incident, didn't you?" His face flushed. He then mumbled something about "misremembering" and skulked away. He had the audacity to hijack my personal experience and relate it to others as his own. Caught in a lie.
NBC's news anchor Brian Williams has just announced he will "step aside" for a while after being caught in an oft-repeated fabrication about having been in a helicopter hit by an enemy rocket propelled grenade over Iraq in 2003. The chopper's pilot and another war veteran finally stepped forward to call out Mr. Williams. Oops! Caught in a lie.
It's a dangerous world out there. Ninety-six American diplomats have died in the line of duty since 1981. Sixty-five CIA employees have sacrificed their lives in the same span of time. And, of course, we've lost thousands of military personnel in the wars we've fought since that last fabled helicopter whooshed from embassy Saigon's roof. The Committee for the Protection of Journalists reports 1116 journalists having been killed covering the news since 1992. America is sadly well represented in this number. The grotesque slaying of James Foley by ISIS last year is seared in the civilized world's conscience.
Unlike those working in the employ of Uncle Sam abroad, journalists are very much on their own when reporting from the field. A resourceful reporter may scare up a flak jacket and helmet while in a combat zone, but he or she lacks a U.S. Marine cohort, contract guards, armored cars and diplomatic security agents to organize personal protection. News reporters risk their lives each and every day to get the facts to the rest of us. And too often they pay with their lives.
The most credible reporters I've known are the ones who aren't given to boasting about the dangers they've experienced while chasing down stories. Oh, a tale, or two, may come out over several beers at the press club or what passes for a pub in Bumfukistan, or wherever. But those who've actually had bullets or mortar rounds flung at them tend to find the experiences too sobering to toss around in loose chatter. Many are too traumatized by their run-ins with mortality to even want to dwell on the memories.
One of my favorite news reporters is Nate Thayer, the Indiana Jones of freelance journalism. A diplomat's son, in the early '90s Nate pursued his dream of becoming an overseas correspondent by running off to civil war-torn Cambodia to cover the peace process and oncoming demise of the genocidal Khmer Rouge. He braved malaria, mine fields, artillery barrages and hostile guerrillas to get the story, culminating in a unique interview with Pol Pot, Cambodia's Hitler, before the latter died of natural causes. Nate thrives in places like Iraq, northern Burma, Bosnia and anywhere else where people are shooting at each other. But he's seen too much killing and human misery to go around talking about it loosely. There are many others like him. You won't find them on the Letterman show jabbering on about how they were almost shot out of the sky, and so on.
Those who make their chops in the rear echelon envy those on the front lines ("REMF syndrome" to you military vets). Too often, the result is stolen glory. Hillary Clinton was caught in a lie several years ago, claiming she and daughter Chelsea "dodged bullets" upon arriving in war-racked Bosnia in 1996. Film footage showed both ladies being warmly greeted by suited officials and flower-bearing girls. The only bullets were chambered in security guards' guns. Senator Richard Blumenthal lied before veterans while on the campaign trail that he had served in the Vietnam War. Total fabrication. Former Senator Tom Harkin likewise was caught lying about wartime service in Vietnam. Former Clinton-appointed ambassador to Switzerland, hotel magnate Larry Lawrence, lied about having served as a Merchant Mariner during WWII. His lie, revealed posthumously, got him exhumed and evicted from Arlington National Cemetery. The list goes on and on. God only knows how many public figure fabulists have gotten away with tall tales like the one(s) Brian Williams has told.
The upshot is this: a lot of folks tell fairy tales about themselves. When caught, like Williams, they'll often speak some mumbo-jumbo about "conflated memories" or "misremembering." The fact, however, is that they are thieves of the truth and often of the honor that rightfully belongs to others.