By now you have heard the story; NBC news anchor Brian Williams is in big trouble for recounting a war story from his Iraq battlefield reporting that wasn’t exactly true. The helicopter he was riding in was not hit by an RPG. It was one of his escort choppers that took the hit. The story is reminiscent of Hilary Clinton’s recollection of landing under enemy fire in the Balkans–when it did not happen that way at all.

It would be easy to dismiss these stories as pure self-aggrandizing lies, and there certainly is an undeniable element of that going on. Yet, it doesn’t explain why people would try to get away with these stories when there were others present to set the record straight. I tend to be a bit more charitable towards these folks, because I’ve caught myself doing it. We sometimes remember things that didn’t happen the way we think they did, in fact, they didn’t happen at all.

I call these “false memories”, and you’ll recall I’ve mentioned a few of them on this forum. I’ve told you about the time I remember a local news reporter solemnly telling her audience “Groucho took a turn for the worst today, in fact, he died.” Another time I recalled the arrangement of plumbing behind a wall in my bathroom to be entirely different than the way it actually was when the drywall was removed a second time. There have been other incidents, and I don’t doubt they may be very common with other people, I just haven’t had the opportunity to stumble onto the evidence that conclusively prove they never happened. Talking with old friends, each of us remembers incidents from our past, in fact often very remarkable and noteworthy incidents, which we do not agree on the details.

Memory can play tricks on you. We remember things incorrectly, or things that may have happened in dreams, or things we saw in movies, or read about, as if they actually happened to us. And, especially if the incidents make a good story, we tend to embellish them so they grow in the retelling. The important thing to note is that they are not necessarily outright lies. The false memories I’ve caught myself in I was absolutely convinced were true, until I was presented with incontrovertible and verifiable evidence that they didn’t happen the way I remembered. And I’ve caught others making the same mistake.

There is a website on the internet written by one of my Navy shipmates, which describes my ship shelling enemy positions in Viet Nam. This is simply not true. I remember distinctly that my ship never fired its weapons in anger. We did a lot of practice shooting, and several times we went to General Quarters fully expecting to go mano a mano with Charlie, but nothing actually happened. But my fellow sailor is convinced otherwise to this day. I have no reason to believe he is a liar, he may be recalling an incident from another cruise he was on, or he may have a memory of when other ships in our squadron engaged enemy positions (but we were not involved in that action). I don’t know, but I do know one of us is mistaken!

False memories happen, and when you manage to track one down and expose it with unimpeachable evidence it can shake you to the core. I don’t think Brian Williams deliberately lied. I think he had somehow convinced himself of the truth of the incident. He had no reason to try and fool us, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t fool himself. He was just in a position to be confronted by witnesses who were there, and had a different account of events. He deserves the benefit of a doubt.