Could it be said the VA Secretary Robert A. McDonlad "misremembered" his military service?

McDonald, a veteran of the 82nd Airborne, is apologizing for overstating his military service during a chat with a homeless man that was caught on video.

“Special forces? What years? I was in special forces!” McDonald said to the homeless man. The exchange was broadcast by CBS on January 30 as part of a story on the VA reaching out to assist homeless vets.

Now McDonald says that he was wrong to have made the claim.

“I reacted spontaneously and I reacted wrongly," McDonald told The Huffington Post when contacted about the special forces claim.

McDonald told The Huffington Post that he “wanted to clear up the confusion I probably created -- I did create” in the exchange with the homeless man in L.A. Saying he was in special forces, McDonald said, “is not right. I was not in special forces. What I said was wrong.”

McDonald said he has many friends in the special forces community “and I have great respect for special forces.” But, he added, “as I thought about this later I knew this [claim] was wrong."

The walk back by McDonald comes just weeks after NBC News anchor Brian Williams faced public humiliation for having to retract a more than decade old claim to have been shot down while riding in a military helicopter in Iraq in 2003.