Speaker 1: Pushkin. On the evening of March twenty sixth, twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: Brian Williams appeared on Late Night with David Letterman.
Speaker 2: We're very happy to have this man now with us.
Speaker 2: He is the Emmy and the Peabody Award winning anchor
Speaker 2: and managing editor of the NBC Nightly News. Ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 2: here he is our good friend, Brian Williams. Mister Williams.
Speaker 1: Mon Brian Williams looks like a TV anchor. He is
Speaker 1: one of those rectangular, super handsome made for television heads,
Speaker 1: maybe two sizes larger than normal, Like he inflates it
Speaker 1: with a bicycle pump before he goes on camera. And
Speaker 1: he's charming, very charming.
Speaker 2: Congratulations twenty years at NBC News, Thank you very much.
Speaker 3: Forty Wars.
Speaker 2: Started as a young man tell me.
Speaker 1: Williams sits down next to Letterman and the two of
Speaker 1: them chit chat and tell jokes. There had been some
Speaker 1: big kerfuffle about the Today Show involving Matt Lower and
Speaker 1: let him In tries and fails to bait Williams into
Speaker 1: saying something juicy about it.
Speaker 2: Now, if I'm onto something, blink twice.
Speaker 1: Then let Himan ask the question that will destroy Brian
Speaker 1: Williams's career.
Speaker 2: Tell me, and if I knew this, I forgot it.
Speaker 2: And if I forgot it.
Speaker 4: I'm ashamed.
Speaker 2: Something happened ten years ago in Iraq. Tell people what
Speaker 2: that occurred. I brought a photo which arrived in my
Speaker 2: email two mornings ago, of where I was tonight, a
Speaker 2: decade ago, this very day, this very day.
Speaker 1: My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History,
Speaker 1: my podcast about things forgotten and misunderstood. This episode is
Speaker 1: part two of my exploration of memory and our naive
Speaker 1: ideas about what memory is worth. If you haven't heard
Speaker 1: the previous episode, you should listen to it first. It's
Speaker 1: the story of an early morning raid on a Nazi
Speaker 1: hideout in Munich, a raid that involved a world class
Speaker 1: harmonica player and a dashingly handsome undercover spy. The lesson
Speaker 1: of that story is it only a fool, except the
Speaker 1: evidence of his own memory is gospel. The lesson of
Speaker 1: this story is we're all fool.
Speaker 2: This was me ten years ago and a young command
Speaker 2: sergeant major. I was in Iraq. Now a couple of
Speaker 2: caveats here, As war correspondents go I am the Herb
Speaker 2: Schmandrick of war correspondents. I'm not terribly good at it.
Speaker 2: It is not what I do full time. I am
Speaker 2: mostly New York based. I do go cover these two
Speaker 2: wars we've been fighting, and when I do, I like
Speaker 2: to go out on patrol. I like to get out
Speaker 2: in it. We were in some helicopters. We were going
Speaker 2: to drop some bridge portions across the Euphrates so the
Speaker 2: third infantry could cross on them. Two of our four
Speaker 2: helicopters were hit by ground fire, including the one I
Speaker 2: was in, No. RPG and AK forty seven.
Speaker 1: As you may remember, the helicopter Brian Williams was riding
Speaker 1: was not in fact hit by ground fire. Williams was
Speaker 1: miles away in another aircraft entirely when the attack happened.
Speaker 1: One of the most respected network news anchors went on
Speaker 1: Late night TV to tell a story about his near
Speaker 1: death experience, and it turned out not to be true.
Speaker 2: What happens the minute everybody realizes you've been hit, we
Speaker 2: figure out how to land safely, and we did. We
Speaker 2: landed very quickly and hard, and we put down and
Speaker 2: we were stuck four birds in the middle of the
Speaker 2: desert and we were north out ahead of the other Americans.
Speaker 2: Oh my, and as a guy, as a journalist, what
Speaker 2: do you think this is a great position to be
Speaker 2: in our holy crap. I got to get out of
Speaker 2: here more toward the holy crap.
Speaker 1: This is what we know for certain about the case
Speaker 1: of Brian Williams and a helicopter.
Speaker 2: Our colleague Brian Williams is back in Kuwait City tonight
Speaker 2: after a close call in the skies over a rock. Ryan,
Speaker 2: tell us about what you got yourself into. Well in
Speaker 2: the end, Tom, it did give us a glimpse.
Speaker 1: Just after the US invasion of Iraq began in the
Speaker 1: spring of two thousand and three, Williams filed a report
Speaker 1: for NBC News from the field. He described how he'd
Speaker 1: been embedded with a convoy of four Chinook helicopters flying
Speaker 1: out of Kuwait City. They were carrying bridge components so
Speaker 1: that the US Army troops could cross the Euphrates. This
Speaker 1: is Williams reporting March twenty sixth, two thousand and three.
Speaker 2: On the ground, we learned the Chinook ahead of of
Speaker 2: us was almost blown out of the sky. That hole
Speaker 2: was made by a rocket propelled grenade or RPG.
Speaker 1: As Williams describes it. All four helicopters ended up on
Speaker 1: the desert floor. There was a massive sandstorm. They were
Speaker 1: trapped there for three harrowing days. The main invading force
Speaker 1: was still miles away.
Speaker 2: What we didn't know was we were north of the invasion.
Speaker 2: We were the northernmost Americans in Iraq.
Speaker 1: Williams's account is included in a book published by NBC
Speaker 1: shortly after. Four years later, he tells it again in
Speaker 1: a blog post written after the death of a retired
Speaker 1: general who was in the helicopter with him. Only this
Speaker 1: time Williams uses a vague sentence there was small arms fire.
Speaker 1: In a later blog post in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: he's more explicit. All four of our low flying chinnooks
Speaker 1: took fire. We were forced down and stayed down. Then
Speaker 1: Letterman twenty thirteen Brian Williams's fateful appearance.
Speaker 2: So we got hit, We sat down. Everyone was okay.
Speaker 2: Our captain took a purple heart injury to his ear
Speaker 2: in the cockpit. But we were alone. They started distributing weapons.
Speaker 2: We heard a noise and it was Bradley Fighting vehicles
Speaker 2: and Abrams tanks coming. They happened to spot us this
Speaker 2: was the invasion, the US invasion. They saw us.
Speaker 1: Suddenly, a story that Williams has been telling in bits
Speaker 1: and pieces gets told in the spotlight of Late night TV,
Speaker 1: and who sees it? Lance Reynolds, the flight engineer on
Speaker 1: the helicopter that got hit. Reynolds responds on NBC's Facebook page. Sorry, dude,
Speaker 1: I don't remember you being on my aircraft. I do
Speaker 1: remember you walking up about an hour after we had
Speaker 1: landed to ask me what happened. One by one the
Speaker 1: members of the flight crews involved come forward to say
Speaker 1: the same thing, and then the skin tell.
Speaker 5: Me, do you know where Brian Williams was at the
Speaker 5: moment that your helicopter was hit by the RPG.
Speaker 1: That's Brian Stelter of CNN interviewing Don Hellis, the pilot
Speaker 1: of the lead helicopter.
Speaker 6: Oh, we had a lot going on, but I am
Speaker 6: pretty sure he was not in our flight at all.
Speaker 1: Then Stelter talks to the pilot of the helicopter that
Speaker 1: Williams was on. His name is Alan Kelly.
Speaker 5: Is it right to say that Brian Williams was aboard
Speaker 5: your helicopter and not aboard the helicopter that was shot
Speaker 5: at in a rock that day.
Speaker 2: That's correct. He was aboard my aircraft at the day
Speaker 2: in March.
Speaker 5: What was your aircraft doing and was it ever within
Speaker 5: sight of the chinook that was shot at?
Speaker 2: As far as the chinook from Big Winni that was
Speaker 2: shot down, we were not within visual range of them.
Speaker 5: So what sort of distance was there between your helicopter
Speaker 5: with Brian Williams aboard and the helicopter that did take fire?
Speaker 5: So initially we were probably a half hour behind them.
Speaker 1: Soon every pundit under the sun is wagging a disdainful finger.
Speaker 5: Tell me what you think, Alancahol, not remember whether or
Speaker 5: not you're in a plane that gets hit?
Speaker 2: I can you not remember that?
Speaker 3: Remember getting punched in the face in the fourth grade?
Speaker 1: Rosie O'Donnell.
Speaker 2: I think you would know if you were in a
Speaker 2: helicopter that was actually hit by a missile. So I
Speaker 2: don't think he didn't remember that. I think he fabricated
Speaker 2: that story.
Speaker 1: John Stewart, we got us a.
Speaker 6: Case here of infotainment confusion syndrome.
Speaker 1: It occurs when the celebrity cortex gets its wires crossed
Speaker 1: with the medulla anchor dolla.
Speaker 7: Even Whoopi Goldberg when he first told the story, He
Speaker 7: told the story as it happened, and every time he
Speaker 7: told it again it got more exciting.
Speaker 3: He was more this, it was more that.
Speaker 7: And by the time he was finished, he was on
Speaker 7: a helicopter.
Speaker 8: I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: It's stolen valor.
Speaker 2: You can get a if you impersonate a soldier, say
Speaker 2: you were in combat, you can actually get arrested and
Speaker 2: charged and in jail for doing just what he did.
Speaker 1: Oh, he's reprehensible, he's disgusting in like.
Speaker 2: There's a lion coward.
Speaker 4: He's been telling the story for twelve years.
Speaker 2: Say repeated, Lissen.
Speaker 1: This goes on from months. NBC suspends him six months
Speaker 1: without pay, culminating with a public penance on the Today Show.
Speaker 1: Matt Lower in the interviewer's.
Speaker 7: Seat, What have these past five months been like for you?
Speaker 2: It has been torture.
Speaker 1: Now, maybe you don't care about Brian Williams. A lot
Speaker 1: has happened since his scandal. He currently has a nightly
Speaker 1: show on MSNBC at eleven Eastern. He's going to be
Speaker 1: fine in the grand scheme of things. What does it matter? Well,
Speaker 1: it matters because of what the case exposes about our
Speaker 1: understanding of memory. Brian Williams remembered a traumatic event one way,
Speaker 1: then a couple of years later he he started remembering
Speaker 1: that same event a different way. And the assumption of
Speaker 1: virtually everyone who weighed in on the case was this,
Speaker 1: if someone changes their original story, then they must be lying.
Speaker 1: That the change must be deliberate and self aggrandizing. Everyone
Speaker 1: assumes memory is a kind of time stamped video of
Speaker 1: what happened in your life, and that if you contradict
Speaker 1: the evidence of the video, you're up to no good.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but that's insane. Free Brian Williams, I'm going
Speaker 1: to ask you a series of questions about the morning
Speaker 1: of September eleventh, two thousand and one. I'm talking with
Speaker 1: my friend Dide Gordon. I've known her forever. How did
Speaker 1: you first learn about the attack on the towers? Um.
Speaker 8: I had just taken my dogs out for a walk,
Speaker 8: and I had bought the New York Post, the New
Speaker 8: York Times, and I remember Paris Hilton was on the
Speaker 8: cover of the New York Post, I think, and I
Speaker 8: went and I, you know, took my walk around the block,
Speaker 8: and I came up to my apartment and I was
Speaker 8: like sitting at my counter reading the newspapers, and I
Speaker 8: saw all these people standing out on Hudson Street, staring
Speaker 8: up in the middle of the street, and so I
Speaker 8: poked my head out the window. I couldn't really see
Speaker 8: what was going on. And then I turned on the television,
Speaker 8: and you know, saw what was happening.
Speaker 1: What did you do next?
Speaker 8: I went up and go. You know, I either called
Speaker 8: you or I went up to your apartment. I can't remember.
Speaker 8: It was one of the It was one of two things.
Speaker 8: I either I think I had called you. I think
Speaker 8: I called you because you're upstairs.
Speaker 1: Dedy Gordon and I used to live in the same
Speaker 1: building in the West Village, above a bodega. Whenever she
Speaker 1: came up to see me, she would sing the theme
Speaker 1: song from the sitcom Threees Company, Come and knock on
Speaker 1: her door. Wait, you called me before you went out
Speaker 1: on the street or after you went on the street.
Speaker 8: I called you before?
Speaker 1: Oh did I? And did I? I picked up you did.
Speaker 8: And I was like, you need to look out your
Speaker 8: window and you did at turn on the news.
Speaker 1: Did you see me that morning or did you leave
Speaker 1: before I came down?
Speaker 8: Now we saw each other and you were like, well,
Speaker 8: I got to go fly someplace today. And I remember
Speaker 8: I said to you, I go what and I know
Speaker 8: the airports were closed? And You're like, oh, well, I
Speaker 8: guess i'll leave tomorrow morning. And I said, oh, like
Speaker 8: you're going to get on a plane like I thought
Speaker 8: you were crazy? And you said, Gordon, this is the
Speaker 8: safest time to fly.
Speaker 4: Is that?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 1: I don't you know?
Speaker 5: So?
Speaker 1: First of all, your memory for this stuff is kind
Speaker 1: of phenomenal. How certain are you about all of those
Speaker 1: memories you just told me?
Speaker 8: How certain am I? Yeah, I'm pretty certain.
Speaker 1: Now let me ask you the same questions I was
Speaker 1: just asking d D. How did you first learn about
Speaker 1: what happened on nine to eleven? Where were you? What
Speaker 1: were you doing? How did you feel when you first
Speaker 1: became aware of the attack? Who was the first person
Speaker 1: you talked to about the attack? What were you doing
Speaker 1: immediately before you became aware of it. I'm going to
Speaker 1: guess that many of you can answer every one of
Speaker 1: those questions. Maybe not with the same specificity as Dede
Speaker 1: because she has an amazing memory, but you can tell
Speaker 1: me where you were when you heard the news. I
Speaker 1: was in bed. Dedie called me. I went down to
Speaker 1: Hudson Street and stood in the crowd watching a twin
Speaker 1: towers burn. Then I went down to a little coffee
Speaker 1: shop around the corner from my house and sat there
Speaker 1: with a cup of tea in numb silence. Nine to
Speaker 1: eleven is what's called a flashbulb event, a big dramatic
Speaker 1: incident that seares itself into our memories, and as a
Speaker 1: whole sub specialty in psychology devoted to the study of
Speaker 1: flashbulb memories. You ask someone where they were right after
Speaker 1: something dramatic or historic happened. Then you come back to
Speaker 1: them months or years later and ask them again and
Speaker 1: measure how accurate their memories are. There have been countless
Speaker 1: studies like this over the years. One was done after
Speaker 1: the death of Princess Die, another after the resignation of
Speaker 1: Margaret Thatcher, the Challenger explosion, the fall of the Berlin Wall,
Speaker 1: the election of Barack Obama, the O. J. Simpson verdict.
Speaker 1: Not surprisingly, there was one done after nine to eleven
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 6: So nine to eleven happened, and I got together with
Speaker 6: a former student of mine at NYU, Liz Phelps.
Speaker 1: The nine to eleven project was headed by Bill Hurst
Speaker 1: from the New School and Liz Phelps at New York University.
Speaker 1: I went to Sea Hurst and he told me that
Speaker 1: he and Phelps had come up with the idea over
Speaker 1: dinner on September twelfth in a restaurant close enough to
Speaker 1: the towers that you could smell the smoke. Hirst says
Speaker 1: that he and Phelps realized they could do the mother
Speaker 1: of all flashbulb studies, So the next day they reached
Speaker 1: out to colleagues around the country Boston, New Haven, New York, Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. Saint Louis, Palo Alto, and Santa Cruz. A
Speaker 1: total of three thousand, two hundred and forty six subjects
Speaker 1: asked the same questions. I just asked you, where were you,
Speaker 1: who were you with? How did you feel? The participants
Speaker 1: were asked these same questions a year later, and two
Speaker 1: years later, and finally on the tenth anniversary of the
Speaker 1: attack in twenty eleven. Now, what did the researchers find. Well, first,
Speaker 1: that everyone knows where they were when they heard the
Speaker 1: towers fell, just like me. Indeedy, it's burned into memory.
Speaker 1: But are those memories accurate? No, they're not. Especially in
Speaker 1: the first year after a flashbulb event. All kinds of
Speaker 1: discrepancies creep in. One of the respondents first said she
Speaker 1: was in the kitchen making breakfast when she heard about
Speaker 1: the attack. A year later, she swore she was in
Speaker 1: the laundry room folding her clothes. Another said in two
Speaker 1: thousand and one that she saw the attack while watching
Speaker 1: the Today Show. A year later, she was convinced that
Speaker 1: a girl in her dorm had rushed into her room
Speaker 1: and told her so. When we look at these kinds
Speaker 1: of inaccuracies and inconsistencies that creep into, how large is
Speaker 1: the variability among the subjects. That is to say, do
Speaker 1: we have some who get everything wrong in retrospect and
Speaker 1: some get everything right?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 6: I would say that the variability is fairly small. Some
Speaker 6: people get everything right, some people get more wrong, but
Speaker 6: it's not a huge variability.
Speaker 1: Hurst finds, on average, a sixty percent decline in memory consistency,
Speaker 1: meaning sixty percent of the answers changed over time. You
Speaker 1: would think that everything about nine to eleven would be
Speaker 1: seared into our minds one of the most dramatic days
Speaker 1: of our generation. But everything is not. Second thing even
Speaker 1: more crucial, Are we aware that our memories of nine
Speaker 1: to eleven are flawed. No, we're not. Our confidence in
Speaker 1: the accuracy of our memories of that day is sky high.
Speaker 1: They're super high. And why walk me It means of
Speaker 1: a dumb question, but walk me through. Why are they
Speaker 1: so high? Hurst says nine to eleven is like a
Speaker 1: death in the family. We feel we have a responsibility
Speaker 1: to remember. If you had only vague memories of where
Speaker 1: you were when you found out your mother died, well.
Speaker 6: Think like, what kind of person are you? How could
Speaker 6: you not remember that? Our New Yorker's confidence levels higher,
Speaker 6: I forget. Everybody's confident level was so high, so it's
Speaker 6: hard to differentiate. PA two.
Speaker 1: We're all absolutely sure about what happened to us on
Speaker 1: nine to eleven. My friend DETI can talk about that
Speaker 1: morning just as if it were yesterday, and I will
Speaker 1: swear on a stack of Bibles that she called me
Speaker 1: on the phone and then I ran downstairs and then
Speaker 1: eventually ended up sitting numb and alone in a coffee shop.
Speaker 1: And yet it is almost certainly the case that we
Speaker 1: are wrong on at least half of those details. It
Speaker 1: did not happen that way. Hers says that the participants
Speaker 1: in flashbulb studies refused to accept this fact, they will
Speaker 1: not admit that their memories are wrong. Take the flash
Speaker 1: Bob study done after the explosion of the Challenger space
Speaker 1: shuttle in nineteen eighty six. The psychologist in charge sat
Speaker 1: down with people months later and showed them how differently
Speaker 1: they described things right after after the disaster. He showed
Speaker 1: them what they actually wrote.
Speaker 6: He says, is it they're handwriting? And they say yes,
Speaker 6: But I don't know why I wrote that, because it's wrong.
Speaker 6: You know. I agree, it's my handwriting. I agree I
Speaker 6: must have written that, But I don't know why I
Speaker 6: mind it because I clearly remember I was in the dorm,
Speaker 6: even though this piece of paper says I was in
Speaker 6: the cafeteria. So this overwhelming confidence that people have.
Speaker 1: Now, why are we so adamant on the subject of memory.
Speaker 1: Because we're memory fundamentalists. We think our memory is a
Speaker 1: camera recording our life in real time with a video
Speaker 1: timestamped and stored for later retrieval.
Speaker 6: It's not like memory is when you remember something, you're
Speaker 6: retrieving it and it remains absolutely stable, and then you
Speaker 6: put it in the footlights of your consciousness. It's more
Speaker 6: that when you retrieve it, it's open up to the
Speaker 6: possibility of change.
Speaker 1: Every time we retrieve it memory. In other words, there's
Speaker 1: a chance it can get contaminated. We hear some new
Speaker 1: detail somewhere about the event, and without realizing it, we
Speaker 1: just added in memory. Researchers talk a lot about what
Speaker 1: they call time slice airs. A couple of things happen
Speaker 1: in the same general time frame, and we get the
Speaker 1: sequence all jumbled up. Didi says she and I talked
Speaker 1: in person that morning of nine to eleven. I have
Speaker 1: no recollection of it, but she does.
Speaker 8: I'm almost positively spoke inside the apartment.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, And then I really said I was getting
Speaker 1: on a plane the next day.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah.
Speaker 8: And you were like kind of cocky about it too.
Speaker 8: You're like you kind of looked at me like, oh, Gordon,
Speaker 8: stop being so neurotic, and you're like, don't you know
Speaker 8: this is the safest time to get on an airplane
Speaker 8: is when something like this happens.
Speaker 1: I could be really quite conscending.
Speaker 8: It turns out it's my favorite thing about you.
Speaker 1: I decided to do a little fact checking. I still
Speaker 1: have by date books from two thousand and one. I'm
Speaker 1: pretty meticulous about keeping track of my travel, and I
Speaker 1: did not have an airplane trip planned for September twelfth. Now,
Speaker 1: maybe I'm mistaken, maybe DD's right, But according to my records,
Speaker 1: I flew to Montreal on September nineteenth, eight days later.
Speaker 1: I think our conversation about flights must have been right
Speaker 1: before that trip, because why would I say it's the
Speaker 1: safest time to fly on the morning of nine to eleven.
Speaker 1: That's something you would only say after the airports had
Speaker 1: reopened with much tighter security. I think DD made a
Speaker 1: time slice era at some point she mistakenly moved that
Speaker 1: memory to the morning of nine to eleven, because it
Speaker 1: seems plausible that we would have talked about planes that morning.
Speaker 1: Now does that make d d a liar? Is she
Speaker 1: working some self promoting angle? Didi is one of the
Speaker 1: most honest people I've ever met. She simply did what
Speaker 1: human beings do when it came to traumatic events. There
Speaker 1: is our memory and there is the truth, and the
Speaker 1: two are not the same. Okay, So what if it's
Speaker 1: not nine to eleven. What if it's a couple of
Speaker 1: years later, at the very beginning of the Iraq War.
Speaker 1: What if I'm in a convoy of helicopters deep in
Speaker 1: enemy territory, scared out of my wits, and the helicopter
Speaker 1: ahead of me gets hit. And I'm a reporter, and
Speaker 1: I interview lots of people that day about what happened,
Speaker 1: and retell the story so many times that their details
Speaker 1: become my details, and I start to think that it
Speaker 1: was my helicopter that got hit. When I read your paper,
Speaker 1: the first person that came to mind is Brian Williams. Ah, Yes, Yes,
Speaker 1: didn't he just committed an incredibly normal human Yes. So
Speaker 1: that was my view, and it was a view of
Speaker 1: most of the people in the memory field that I
Speaker 1: know of. You're of the mind that he genuinely believed
Speaker 1: the story as told it. Yes, Now do you see
Speaker 1: Brian Williams predicament. Everyone thinks he's lying in order to
Speaker 1: paint himself as some heroic war correspondent. But he doesn't
Speaker 1: think he's lying. He honestly believes he was in the
Speaker 1: lead helicopter with the same confidence we all have in
Speaker 1: our FLASHBAULB memories. Did he remembers plain as day that
Speaker 1: I was catching a flight on September twelfth? People in
Speaker 1: FLASHBOLB studies look at their own handwriting from years earlier,
Speaker 1: and say that can't be right. That's not how I
Speaker 1: remember it.
Speaker 7: And on Thursday, NBC News announced that Brian Williams, a
Speaker 7: twenty two year veteran of this network, would not be
Speaker 7: returning as the anchor of NBC Nightly News. He steps down.
Speaker 1: When Brian Williams does his penance on The Today Show
Speaker 1: in mid twenty thirteen, he and Matt Lower go around
Speaker 1: and around in circles.
Speaker 2: I told the story correctly for years before I told
Speaker 2: it incorrectly. I was not trying to mislead people. That
Speaker 2: to me is a huge difference here.
Speaker 1: But Matt Lower is having none of it.
Speaker 7: I worry as you say this, Brian, that people who
Speaker 7: are going to have listened to your apology on air
Speaker 7: and in other areas Facebook and Stars and Stripes, who
Speaker 7: heard you use words like conflated aircraft or made mistakes
Speaker 7: with my memory of certain things, are now going to
Speaker 7: hear what you're saying now, and they're going to say
Speaker 7: he's still saying he didn't intend to mislead people, and
Speaker 7: yet he didn't tell the truth. And he had to know,
Speaker 7: as the guy who lived through those experiences, that it
Speaker 7: wasn't the truth.
Speaker 1: He had to know as the guy who lived through
Speaker 1: those experiences that it wasn't the truth. No, that's one
Speaker 1: hundred percent wrong. What should Matt Lower have said? He
Speaker 1: should have said, Brian, memory is fallible. You're a public figure.
Speaker 1: For goodness sake, the next time you go on National
Speaker 1: TV to tell a war story, go back and check
Speaker 1: to see if your story is accurate. But Lower doesn't
Speaker 1: say the Today's Show interview was built as tough minded,
Speaker 1: uncompromising journalism. It was actually the opposite, an interrogation about
Speaker 1: memory conducted by someone who hasn't the slightest clue how
Speaker 1: memories work. And what is Brian Williams supposed to do?
Speaker 1: He is no defense. All he can do is debase himself.
Speaker 2: I understand it. This came from clearly a bad place,
Speaker 2: a bad urge inside me. This was clearly ego driven,
Speaker 2: the desire to better my role in a story I
Speaker 2: was already in. That's what I've been tearing apart and unpacking.
Speaker 1: This comes from clearly a bad place. Once again wrong.
Speaker 1: It comes from the most human of places, and Matt Lower,
Speaker 1: Matt Lower, for heaven's sake, puts on the high hat.
Speaker 7: Days after you told the story on Nightly News. You
Speaker 7: went on the air and you apologized, and I just
Speaker 7: said you used terms like I'm mistaken, I was mistaken
Speaker 7: in my recollections. Did you give thought at the time
Speaker 7: to going on the air and.
Speaker 6: Saying I lied.
Speaker 1: Matt Lower, by the way, had an entire staff whose
Speaker 1: job it was to prepare him for interviews. This research
Speaker 1: on memory is not a secret. Bill Hurst is at
Speaker 1: the New School on fourteenth Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.
Speaker 1: Hurst's co author, Liz Phelps, is at NYU, down the
Speaker 1: street from Rockefeller Center, where the Today Show is taped.
Speaker 1: Two of the world's leading experts on memory are four
Speaker 1: subway stops away on the B or D trains On
Speaker 1: a nice day, Laura could have walked it.
Speaker 7: How hard is this not to put words in your mouth?
Speaker 7: But had you gone on the air that night and say, folks,
Speaker 7: I lied and I'm sorry, do you think the outcome
Speaker 7: would have been different? Do you think forgiveness would have
Speaker 7: come sooner?
Speaker 1: Except he didn't lie. Lying in this instance would be
Speaker 1: Brian Williams pretending that he deliberately made up that story.
Speaker 1: So Matt Lower is saying that he would rather Williams
Speaker 1: had lied and confessed that he'd lied, rather than having
Speaker 1: told the truth, that he honestly thought he was telling
Speaker 1: the truth. The Council of Cardinals could not make sense
Speaker 1: of the moral logic of that. By the way, it's
Speaker 1: worth noting that the whole Brian Williams saga is a
Speaker 1: case steady in memory failure. CNN's Brian Stelter interviews Don Hellis,
Speaker 1: the pilot of the helicopter that got shot down. He
Speaker 1: asked Hellis when he first heard Brian Williams mischaracterizing what happened,
Speaker 1: and Hellis says, oh, a few weeks later, when I
Speaker 1: got back to Kuwait, meaning in two thousand and three.
Speaker 5: This is crucial, mister Hellis, because according to the timeline
Speaker 5: that we've been looking at for the past several days,
Speaker 5: it wasn't until about two thousand and seven that Brian
Speaker 5: Willing began to embellish this story about being actually nearby
Speaker 5: or even on the chopper that was struck by the RPG.
Speaker 5: So you're saying you heard it on television in two
Speaker 5: thousand and three.
Speaker 6: Well, I'm saying I heard on the internet.
Speaker 2: That was an interview an Internet.
Speaker 5: Video of the television segment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, Stelter is way too nice to say it,
Speaker 1: but hellas can't be right. His recollection is off by
Speaker 1: four years, and does he realize how badly he's misremembered
Speaker 1: the dates. No, he's adamant. Then another man comes forward,
Speaker 1: the pilot of William's helicopter, and claims they did take
Speaker 1: small arms fire, goes on CNN, adds some gossipy details.
Speaker 1: Then a day later the pilot takes it all back.
Speaker 1: Quote the information I gave you was true based on
Speaker 1: my memories. But at this point I'm questioning my memories,
Speaker 1: which might be the first self aware thing said anyone
Speaker 1: during this whole sorry affair. In the Brian Williams case,
Speaker 1: everyone was allowed to have a bad memory except Brian Williams.
Speaker 1: Sorry to harp on him, but I did think it
Speaker 1: is he was cheated, very unfair.
Speaker 4: He was.
Speaker 6: I think absolutely.
Speaker 1: I'm waiting to see the formation of cognitive psychologists for
Speaker 1: Brian Williams as a lobby group. I was thinking of
Speaker 1: doing it.
Speaker 3: I felt so sorry for him.
Speaker 4: Thanks for doing this roast, Thank you for joining us, Ronan.
Speaker 9: And thank you everybody for coming.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 7: Hello.
Speaker 1: Not long ago, after the Harvey Weinstein scandal broke, I
Speaker 1: went to a talk in Manhattan at the ninety second
Speaker 1: Street Why. It was a conversation between Rose McGowan, who
Speaker 1: was the first actress to go on the record with
Speaker 1: accusations against wine Stein, and Ronan Faroh, who wrote the definitive,
Speaker 1: devastating account of the Weinstein case for the New Yorker magazine.
Speaker 1: It was a fascinating and sometimes strange evening. McGowan speaks
Speaker 1: in a kind of elliptical poetry. It's not always obvious
Speaker 1: what she means. Pharaoh was a lawyer before he turned
Speaker 1: to journalism. He's rigorous.
Speaker 4: So when asked me, if you were in oz, who
Speaker 4: would you be?
Speaker 2: Who would you be?
Speaker 7: ROAs the curtain?
Speaker 4: I would be the curtain.
Speaker 9: You're not the man behind the curtain. You are the curtain.
Speaker 4: I am the curtain. The curtain's very pretty. The curtain
Speaker 4: gets used kicked aside. Nobody really notices a curtain. They're
Speaker 4: appreciative that it's there, but to just pull aside when
Speaker 4: it's done. But it absorbs everything from both sides. From
Speaker 4: this side presentationally, it looks so great to you, right,
Speaker 4: this is the curtain that you see from the backside.
Speaker 4: You see everything too. What he knows is the curtain.
Speaker 4: The curtain's taking notes.
Speaker 1: McGowan is someone who requires an interpreter, and there was
Speaker 1: one moment that really struck me when Pharaoh talked about
Speaker 1: what being an interpreter meant. He was trying to get
Speaker 1: people at NBC, where he worked at the time, to
Speaker 1: take McGowan's accusations seriously.
Speaker 9: I spent a year listening to a lot of powerful
Speaker 9: men call these women who were relating the worst experiences
Speaker 9: of a lifetime crazy, call them unstable, call them unreliable narrators,
Speaker 9: and a lot worse things that I won't repeat on
Speaker 9: this stage. You know that was something that was lobbed
Speaker 9: at your story countless times. I sat in rooms and
Speaker 9: defended the fact that that on the record testimony from
Speaker 9: you mattered and what you use so people like NBC.
Speaker 1: A few minutes later, the two of them start talking
Speaker 1: about what it takes for a story like McGowan's to
Speaker 1: break through all the skepticism and indifference.
Speaker 9: I think when women come forward individually and they do
Speaker 9: a blog post or a social media post and tell
Speaker 9: their story, that's great. The question is it's then incumbent
Speaker 9: on reporters to do right by that and the best
Speaker 9: way to do justice, I think to any person coming
Speaker 9: forward with a difficult story is to interrogate it as
Speaker 9: thoroughly as possible, and you know, lend credence farth where
Speaker 9: it's due.
Speaker 1: One of the battle cries of the fight against sexual
Speaker 1: predation has been believe the women. But notice that's not
Speaker 1: what Pharaoh is saying. He did. He says the best
Speaker 1: way to do justice to any person coming forward with
Speaker 1: a difficult story is to interrogate it as thoroughly as
Speaker 1: possible and lend credence where it's due. Pharaoh didn't believe
Speaker 1: Rose McGowan. Pharaoh listened to Rose McGowan. He took her seriously.
Speaker 1: That's what memory does, demands. What if Rose McGowan had
Speaker 1: said that she'd been assaulted by Weinstein in a hotel
Speaker 1: room in Paris and it turned out to have been
Speaker 1: in London, and she said it had happened in March
Speaker 1: and it turned out to be July. Can you imagine
Speaker 1: her on the Today Show twisting and turning as she
Speaker 1: tries to defend that lapse in memory. To Matt Lower,
Speaker 1: you said you were in Paris, you were miles away
Speaker 1: in London. You had to know, as the woman who
Speaker 1: lived through those experiences that it wasn't the truth. But
Speaker 1: remembering yourself in one place when you were actually in
Speaker 1: another does not mean that you're lying. It just means
Speaker 1: that uncovering the truth requires an understanding of what memory
Speaker 1: can and cannot do. If we don't get the small
Speaker 1: cases right, the Brian Williams cases, we're going to be
Speaker 1: helpless at the big cases.
Speaker 2: Looking back, it had to have been ego that made
Speaker 2: me think I had to be sharper, funnier, quicker than
Speaker 2: anybody else, put myself closer to the action having been
Speaker 2: at the action in the beginning.
Speaker 1: Oh, please stop apologizing for a crime you didn't commit.
Speaker 1: Free Brian Williams. Revisionist History is a Panoply production. The
Speaker 1: senior producer is mil LaBelle, with Jacob Smith and Camille Baptista.
Speaker 1: Our editor is Julia Barton. Flon Williams is our engineer.
Speaker 1: Fact checking by Beth Johnson. Original music by Luis Quiera.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Andy Bauers and Jake Blisberg. I'm Malcolm vladmam.
Speaker 1: So what's interesting is so I'm sure you called me,
Speaker 1: and you're sure you called me, but there's a chance.
Speaker 8: I'm almost one hundred percent positive I called you, and
Speaker 8: I am too.
Speaker 1: But there is a chance that you didn't call me.
Speaker 8: There isn't a chance because I know I called.
Speaker 1: You, I know you called me too, But I know,
Speaker 1: I know it's incredibly hard to deal with, but it's like,
Speaker 1: there's a chance you didn't. I mean, there's a chance
Speaker 1: you knocked on my door, you know.
Speaker 8: But then I started thinking about did I really knock
Speaker 8: on his door? Because I respected your privacy as you
Speaker 8: respected mine, and I would have never just went up
Speaker 8: to knock on your door just in case that you
Speaker 8: had like a lady up there or something, so in
Speaker 8: respect for that, I would have probably called you first.
Speaker 1: Just me, not even if like the twin towers are
Speaker 1: smoking on the you know.
Speaker 8: I would have not walked upstairs to interrupt your your
Speaker 8: intimate moment with a lady friend, even if the twin
Speaker 8: towers were on fire. But please don't conclude that in
Speaker 8: your podcast.
Speaker 9: Knock been waiting for you, Waiting for you.
Speaker 1: Three sp