On Thursday, former Bill Clinton communications director and co-host of “Good Morning America,” George Stephanopoulos, interviewed Tom Brokaw accuser Linda Vester.
Stephanopoulos wasted no time in lecturing Vester. “Tom Brokaw is pretty angry,” he told her. He then questioned Vester’s memory of the alleged incident, asking, “Are you absolutely convinced that everything you remember about that incident, those incidents with Tom Brokaw are what happened?”
“George, my memory of those incidents is crystal clear,” Vester retorted. “The notes that I took immediately afterward are crystal clear.”
Stephanopoulos also grilled Vester on her behavior at the time.
“Why not at the time say something to others at NBC in management,” he asked.
“Let me paint a picture of what it was like inside NBC News when this happened,” she replied. “I was a young reporter, just getting started. Tom Brokaw was the most powerful at the network. So the idea that I could go forward to management and say that I had been assaulted by the most powerful man at the network and a major moneymaker, well, that just get heard.”
She added, “There was HR, but HR was not considered a place where you could go with a complaint about sexual harassment. It was considered a place where you went if your paycheck went to the wrong address, and so for many reasons I felt it was unsafe to go to NBC, and I never felt safe at NBC News again.”
Vester also called out NBC News for their decision to conduct an investigation into Brokaw’s alleged behavior internally.
“[A]as soon as NBC News or NBC Universal hires outside counsel to do a proper, thorough investigation, I will be glad to sit down,” she said.
“You don’t trust them to investigate this themselves?” Stephanopoulos asked.
“Well, I mean I think it’s common sense,” Vester answered. “You can’t investigate yourself. You just can’t. There’s an internal bias. That’s how it works, so you have to have outside counsel.”
You can watch the video below: