REUTERS/Andrew Kelly
NBC News’ Tom Brokaw sent a long, defiant letter to his colleagues at the network on Friday, disputing Linda Vester’s allegations that he made sexual advances toward her in the mid-1990s. In the letter obtained by The Los Angeles Times, Brokaw described Vester’s accusations as a “drive by shooting” and said he was “ambushed and then perp walked...taken to the guillotine and stripped of any honor and achievement I had earned in more than a half century of journalism and citizenship.” He also called her a “character assassin,” and claimed she had a grudge against the network. “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,” he wrote. Brokaw remembered giving Vester a “perfunctory goodnight kiss” when they met in London, but said his “memory is that it happened at the door—on the cheek. No clenching her neck.” Brokaw also said he called then-Fox News Chief Executive Roger Ailes to hire Vester as an anchor after her contract was not renewed at the network in 1999. Vester has accused Brokaw of making unwanted sexual advances—and pressuring her to have a sexual relationship with him—while they worked together at NBC, according to The Washington Post and Variety.