Alabama Army pilot warned MSNBC Brian Williams was lying, was ignored

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February 8, 2015

U.S. Army soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division’s Company C, 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, exit an Army CH-47 Chinook (Photo: U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Shawn Hussong)

ENTERPRISE, Ala. — A retired Army helicopter pilot in Enterprise, Ala., wrote an email to MSNBC over a decade ago warning the network that Brian Williams’ story that he had been in a helicopter that took enemy fire in Iraq was false. He was ignored.

“It just wasn’t close to what actually happened,” Retired CW4 Don Helus told the Dothan Eagle.

Helus was flying a U.S. Army Chinook over the desert from Kuwait to Iraq in March of 2003 when a sandstorm forced him to fly much lower than normal. He and seven others on board initially began taking small arms fire before being hit by two rocket-propelled grenades, one of which exploded and ultimately forced the chopper to land.

Williams, who is now the anchor for NBC’s top-rated Nightly News program, was at the time on assignment covering the Iraq War. In a story he has recounted in various forms over the past dozen years, Williams claimed to have been aboard Helus’ helicopter — of at least in the same group of helicopters — during the incident.

“I looked down the tube of an RPG that had been fired at us and had hit the chopper in front of ours,” Williams said in one particularly vivid retelling of the story.

In reality, Williams did not arrive on the scene until later in a second group of helicopters.

After hearing Williams’ inaccurate account of what happened, Helus wrote an email to the television network, but did not receive a response.

The truth has since then come to light, and Williams was forced to admit the inaccuracies of his story. He is now temporarily off the air as NBC conducts an internal investigation.

“I had to chuckle, and it is not because I wish ill of Brian Williams,” Helus said. “It was just ‘admit you are wrong and take your lumps.’ It really wasn’t an apology. It was more of an excuse than anything… Just be honest with the public. If you screwed up, say you screwed up.”