Williams May Have Fudged Meeting Pope

In addition to “misremembering” the details of his coverage of Iraq and Hurricane Katrina, Brian Williams may have embellished a story about meeting the pope. Williams’s account of meeting Pope John Paul II as a student at Catholic University in 1979 has come under scrutiny. Although Williams had said in 2002 that he was a volunteer who helped prep for the pope’s visit, while delivering the school’s commencement address in 2004 he added that he had met the pope. When Pope John Paul II died in 2005, Williams added more detail about meeting him and then even more, saying he was able to get in contact with the pope because he chatted up a Secret Service agent. Yet when he spoke to Esquire about meeting the pope, Williams failed to mention the Secret Service detail, according to an account traced by CNN Money.