Maureen Dowd: NBC execs were warned a year ago that Brian Williams was 'constantly inflating his biography'

NBC executives were reportedly aware of anchor Brian Williams' tendency to embellish long before he admitted that he exaggerated a story from his coverage of the Iraq invasion in 2003.

Maureen Dowd writes in The New York Times that network executives were warned a year ago about Williams, who has taken himself off the air for "several days" amid the controversy.

From her column:

NBC executives were warned a year ago that Brian Williams was constantly inflating his biography. They were flummoxed over why the leading network anchor felt that he needed Hemingwayesque, bullets-whizzing-by flourishes to puff himself up, sometimes to the point where it was a joke in the news division.

But the caustic media big shots who once roamed the land were gone, and "there was no one around to pull his chain when he got too over-the-top," as one NBC News reporter put it.

This account matches one provided to the New York Post last week. A source who spoke to the Post said Brokaw and former NBC News president Steve Capus have known for a long time that Williams was spreading a false story about Iraq. They reportedly warned him against it.

Another "longtime NBC employee who has worked with Williams on several occasions" told the Post "everyone" at the network knew Williams was "a liar."

Earlier this month, Williams said on NBC that while he was in Iraq in 2003, he was flying in a helicopter that "was forced down after being hit by an RPG." It's a story he has told on multiple occasions, including on the "Late Show With David Letterman."

But this narrative turned out to be false. After Williams repeated the story last week, crew members who were on the helicopter that was actually hit by a rocket-propelled grenade came forward to say that Williams was on another helicopter that arrived at the crash site later.