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