Ronald Reagan’s wartime lies: The president had quite a Brian Williams problem

Reagan spent WW II in Hollywood. He told the Israeli prime minister he was at the liberation of Nazi death camps

LUKE BRINKER

When it emerged that NBC News anchor Brian Williams had misled the public for years with a harrowing account of coming under enemy fire on a military helicopter during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, observers were quick to draw comparisons with other public figures caught telling tall tales about combat experiences. Some hearkened back to Hillary Clinton’s bogus 2008 assertion that she had landed “under sniper fire” during a trip to Bosnia a dozen years earlier; in reality, video from the trip showed a smiling Clinton and her daughter walking calmly on the tarmac, with no sign of trouble whatsoever.

There’s another figure who merits mention in this discussion, one whose serial blurring of lines between fiction and reality was a mainstay of his public career. That figure, of course, was Ronald Reagan.

Reagan’s fibs were manifold. They included his campaign-trail tale of a “Chicago welfare queen” with 80 aliases, 30 addresses, and 12 Social Security cards, whom he alleged had claimed “over $150,000? in government benefits. The woman whom Reagan made infamous was convicted of using only two aliases, used to collect $8,000.

Once in office, Reagan’s deception in the Iran-Contra scandal briefly threatened his presidency. First, Reagan flatly denied wrongdoing, publicly declaring, “We did not — repeat, did not — trade weapons or anything else for hostages, nor will we.” Months later, when subsequent revelations rendered that assertion untenable, Reagan delivered an Oval Office address in which he tried to reconcile his public claims with the factual record. “A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages,” Reagan said. “My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.”

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http://www.salon.com/2015/02/07/ronald_reagans_wartime_lies_the_president_had_quite_a_brian_williams_problem/