According to the New Orleans Advocate, Williams’ reporting of Hurricane Katrina is drawing scrutiny because he said he saw a body floating face down in the French Quarter of New Oreleans.
In a 2006 interview with former Disney CEO Michael Eisner, he said, “When you look out of your hotel window in the French Quarter and watch a man float by face down, when you see bodies that you last saw in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, and swore to yourself that you would never see in your country.” Eisner suggested in the interview that Williams emerged from former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw’s shadow with his Katrina coverage.
Former city health director Brobson Lutz tells the Advocate that the French Quarter was mainly dry. “We were never wet. It was never wet,” Lutz says.
Last week Williams was at a New York Rangers game with a soldier who was protecting him and other American soldiers while a convoy was forced to land in Iraq in 2003. Williams claims the helicopter he was on was shot my enemy fire and was forced down. Veterans challenged his account and he was forced to clarify on air Wednesday night, “I said I was traveling in an aircraft that was hit by RPG fire. I was instead in a following aircraft. We all landed after the ground fire incident and spent two harrowing nights in a sandstorm in the Iraq desert,” Williams said Wednesday.
