Brian Williams' Fall: From Storyteller to Yarn Spinner
If anyone would be upset with Brian Williams, I figured that it would be Doug Sterner. The decorated Vietnam veteran has made a career out of tracking down heroes who deserve to be honored and exposing the "stolen valor" of phonies who don't.
That describes Williams in many people's minds. The troubled "NBC Nightly News" anchor took a leave of absence after recanting and apologizing for his claims that he had been aboard a helicopter that was hit by an enemy rocket-propelled grenade while he was covering the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Sterner, who earned two bronze star medals in two tours in Vietnam, seemed to fit the profile of an angry vet who would charge Williams with "stolen valor," false claims of war heroism by people who, in many cases, didn't even serve in the military.
The Boulder, Colorado resident curates the Hall of Valor database at the Military Times website, which aims to document every person who ever earned a medal for combat heroism. He also campaigned for the passage of the federal Stolen Valor Act, which outlaws fraudulent claims of war heroism.
Yet in a telephone interview he sounded surprisingly unruffled about the Williams fiasco.
"I have a headline for you," Sterner said in his Boulder headquarters: "Stolen Valor Hunter Defends Brian Williams."
Say, what?
"I'm defending Brian Williams," Sterner announced. "First of all, he's not a stolen valor case. He did not claim to be somewhere that he wasn't. He was there in a war zone, as he said. He was in harm's way. His helicopter was not hit by an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) but it could have been hit. They were in danger."
Put simply, Sterner said, Williams took a true incident and embellished it to make it and himself sound more exciting -- "Or, in other words, he told what we call a 'war story.' We all tell war stories. Including me! Most often the embellishment is motivated not by a desire to defraud anyone, but by a sincere desire to tell a good story."
A review of William's public retellings of his yarn reveals a significant evolution: The drama grows like the size and length of "the one that got away" on a fishing trip.
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