Brokaw Slams CNN Cover-up, Mum on His Own
newsmax.com
"NBC Nightly News" anchorman Tom Brokaw blasted his competitors at CNN Wednesday morning for covering up atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein's regime.
But the top network newsman didn't say a word about his own efforts four years ago to protect the Clinton administration by suppressing news of a personal atrocity allegedly committed by the president of the United States.
"I was quite stunned when I read the whole [Times op-ed piece by CNN News executive Eason Jordan]," Brokaw told radio host Don Imus. "I feel strongly that you could have reported the stories without necessarily having endangered the specific people that were a part of his concern."
The veteran anchorman said that CNN had compromised its credibility, explaining: "You're opening the public to questioning what kind of other deals you've made to be in what other countries. What are you withholding from them? That's a big problem for [CNN]."
But the "Nightly News" anchor didn't mention the "big problem" NBC faced in January 1999, when its ace investigative reporter Lisa Myers finally snagged an interview with Clinton rape accuser Juanita Broaddrick after pursuing the story for the better part of a year.
Rather than run its bombshell Broaddrick exclusive as soon as it was nailed down, Brokaw's network kept the nation in the dark for more than a month about a credible rape allegation against a president who had just been impeached for his Sexgate cover-up.
As the network dithered, Broaddrick told NewsMax.com that Myers had warned her about NBC's footdragging. "The good news is you're credible," the rape accuser remembers her saying. "The bad news is you're very, very credible."
Still, NBC decided not to broadcast Broaddrick's account of Clinton's brutal sexual assault, forcing her to turn to the Wall Street Journal just to get the story out.
Finally, on Feb. 24, 1999 - nearly two weeks after Clinton's Senate impeachment trial had ended, the network relented, running 24 minutes of Broaddrick's eight-hour interview with Myers on "Dateline NBC."
Brokaw was so livid over his network's decision to go public with the bombshell story that he refused to even mention it on his own "Nightly News" broadcast. |
