UPDATE: Tom Brokaw has written a lengthy rebuttal against the accusations that he sexually assaulted his former colleague, Linda Vester, in the 1990s. The email (sent to a handful of NBC employees and obtained by The Hollywood Reporter) is below in its entirety.
“It is 4:00 am on the first day of my new life as an accused predator in the universe of American journalism. I was ambushed and then perp walked across the pages of The Washington Post and Variety as an avatar of male misogyny, taken to the guillotine and stripped of any honor and achievement I had earned in more than a half century of journalism and citizenship.
I am angry, hurt and unmoored from what I thought would be the final passage of my life and career, a mix of written and broadcast journalism, philanthropy and participation in environmental and social causes that have always given extra meaning to my life.
Instead I am facing a long list of grievances from a former colleague who left NBC News angry that she had failed in her pursuit of stardom. She has unleashed a torrent of unsubstantiated criticism and attacks on me more than twenty years after I opened the door for her and a new job at Fox news.
Linda Vester was given the run of the Washington Post and Variety to vent her grievances, to complain that I tickled her without permission (you read that right), that I invaded her hotel room, accepted an invitation to her apartment under false pretenses and in general was given a free hand to try to destroy all that I have achieved with my family, my NBC career, my writing and my citizenship.
My family and friends are stunned and supportive. My NBC colleagues are bewildered that Vester, who had limited success at NBC News, a modest career at Fox and a reputation as a colleague who had trouble with the truth, was suddenly the keeper of the flame of journalistic integrity.
Her big charge: that on two occasions more than 20 years ago I made inappropriate and uninvited appearances in her apartment and in a hotel room. As an eager beginner, Vester, like others in that category, was eager for advice and camaraderie with senior colleagues. She often sought me out for informal meetings, including the one she describes in her New York hotel room. I should not have gone but I emphatically did not verbally and physically attack her and suggest an affair in language right out of pulp fiction.
She was coy, not frightened, filled with office gossip, including a recent rumor of an affair. As that discussion advanced she often reminded me she was a Catholic and that she was uncomfortable with my presence. So I left, 23 years later, to be stunned by her melodramatic description of the meeting. A year or so later, as I passed through London after covering end of WWII ceremonies in Moscow, I saw her in the office, chatted and agreed to a drink later. (If NY was so traumatic, why a reunion?) She knew a bar but by that late hour it was closed so she suggested her nearby apartment (not, “Well, nowhere to go. See you tomorrow”).
As I remember, she was at one end of a sofa, I was at the other. It was late and I had been up for 24 hours. As I got up to leave I may have leaned over for a perfunctory goodnight kiss, but my memory is that it happened at the door – on the cheek. No clenching her neck. That move she so vividly describes is NOT WHO I AM. Not in high school, college or thereafter.
As a private citizen who married a wealthy man, she has been active in social causes but she came to Me:Too late, portraying herself as a den mother. In the intervening years since we met on those two occasions, she had no reason to worry I could affect her career.
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Some of her relatives by marriage are very close friends. She couldn’t pick up the phone and say, “I’d like to talk. I have issues from those two meetings 20 years ago?” Instead she became a character assassin. Strip away all of the hyperbole and what has she achieved? What was her goal? Hard to believe it wasn’t much more Look At Me than Me:Too.
I deeply resent the pain and anger she inflicted on my wife, daughters and granddaughters – all women of considerable success and passion about women’s rights which they personify in their daily lives and professions. We’ll go on as a family that pursues social justice in medical emergency rooms, corporate offices, social therapy, African women’s empowerment and journalism. And no one woman’s assault can take that away.
I am proud of who I am as a husband, father, grandfather, journalist and citizen. Vester, the Washington Post and Variety cannot diminish that. But in this one woman piece of sensational claims they are trying.
Tom Brokaw
—
ORIGINAL STORY: Another legendary journalist is under fire for allegedly sexually assaulting a colleague — this time it’s internationally known NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw.
The Washington Post reported Thursday that Brokaw allegedly made unwanted sexual advances on multiple women in the 1990s.
One woman in particular, Linda Vester, a former NBC reporter and Fox News anchor, claims that Brokaw tried to forcibly kiss her on two occasions. At the time of the alleged assaults, she was in her 20s, and Brokaw would have been in his 50s.
Another woman, who was not identified, made similar claims about Brokaw to the Post. The woman said Brokaw acted inappropriately toward her when she was a production assistant for NBC Nightly News; he was the anchor of the broadcast at the time. This mistreatment also allegedly occurred in the 1990s.
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Brokaw, now 78 years old, denied the accusations. The anchor has been married to his wife, Meredith Lynn Auld, since 1962.
“I met with Linda Vester on two occasions, both at her request, 23 years ago because she wanted advice with respect to her career at NBC,” Brokaw said in a statement issued through NBC News. “The meetings were brief, cordial and appropriate, and despite Linda’s allegations, I made no romantic overtures towards her at that time or any other.”
Vester showed industry publication Variety her journals from the time, and they supposedly corroborate her story.
“I am speaking out now because NBC has failed to hire outside counsel to investigate a genuine, long-standing problem of sexual misconduct in the news division,” Vester said to The Post.
Vester, who had reported from the Middle East and covered the Gulf War for NBC, was 28 when she was in Colorado in 1993 with Brokaw to cover Pope John Paul II’s visit to the U.S.
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“We were in the Denver bureau, and there was a conference room. I’m standing there, and Tom Brokaw enters through the door and grabs me from behind and proceeds to tickle me up and down my waist,” she told Variety.
Vester said others were in the room, but no one “acted like anything wrong was happening.”
“He was the most powerful man at the network, and I was the most junior person,” she said.
Vester spoke with the Post of another alleged incident in a New York hotel room with Brokaw, this one in January 1994. She said she had plans to leave New York ahead of a looming snowstorm, but Brokaw discouraged her and suggested that they get a drink.
“I only drink milk and cookies,” Vester claimed she said as a way of avoiding Brokaw’s alleged suggestion (while reminding him of the age difference between them).
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But when plans to travel to Washington, D.C., got cancelled, Vester said, Brokaw continued to pursue her with a 3 a.m. phone call to her room.
“Once in my room … I received three phone calls,” she told The Post. “One from a friend, another from a source; the third was Tom Brokaw. He said to order milk and cookies and he was coming over.”
Before she could react, Brokaw was at her door.
“What do you want from me?” Vester said she asked Brokaw.
“An affair of more than passing affection,” Brokaw allegedly replied.
“But you’re married,” she said. “And I’m Catholic.”
She claimed that Brokaw then urged her to sit next to him on the couch. He pressed his index finger to her lips and said, ‘This is our compact.'”
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“My insides shook,” Vester said. “I went completely cold.”
“He grabbed me behind my neck and tried to force me to kiss him,” she told Variety. “I was shocked to feel the amount of force and his full strength on me.”
Brokaw said he wanted to “show… how to give a real kiss.”
“I could smell alcohol on his breath, but he was totally sober,” Vester said about the alleged interaction. “He spoke clearly. He was in control of his faculties.”
Vester said her body language and lack of reciprocation eventually caused Brokaw to leave.
“I think I should go,” he allegedly said to her as he left the room. She claims another similar incident with Brokaw took place over a year later in London.
Vester left NBC in 1999 to work at Fox News, where she remained until 2006.
Brokaw is the most recent of many media personalities to be accused of sexual misconduct in recent months, including his former colleague Matt Lauer, who left the Today show and the network after several women came forward with allegations.
Lauer has admitted that he acted inappropriately but denies any coercive or abusive behaviour.
If you or someone you know is experiencing abuse or is involved in an abusive situation, please visit the Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime for help. They are also reachable toll-free at 1-877-232-2610.
— With files from The Associated Press
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