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CRASHING IN THE LOWER NINTH WARD

President Bush is airborne, and right now we are feverishly condensing a wide-ranging 25-minute conversation with the president (with stops and starts for cameras, logistics, venues, and the heat) into broadcast form. The term of art we use is "crash edit," and right now that's exactly appropriate. We covered a number of topics, from Katrina to Iraq to his own legacy... to his relationship with his father... to his summer reading list. The latter contains a surprise that surpasses Albert Camus' "The Stranger." The schedule for the president's time on the ground... and our time with him... was revised as late as 2 a.m. It was further revised when the president moved our interview up by an hour, on the fly, because of the heat of the day and the crowd waiting to see him and the first lady.

We will take a moment tonight to air tape of how we began the broadcast exactly a year ago. How little we knew then... about what was on the way.

We'll also have the other news of this day, but from where we sit -- the president's comments make up much of the news. A lot of people -- the best technical and editorial people in our business -- worked very hard today in the blistering heat of the wasteland that is this portion of the Lower Ninth Ward -- in order to bring you tonight's broadcast.

Tomorrow evening we'll be back in our home studio in New York. We hope you can join us for tonight's broadcast from New Orleans.

Photo caption: Brian and President Bush talk today at Musicians' Village in the Upper Ninth Ward. Photo by Subrata De, NBC News.

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Early Nightly is up

With 2 1/2 hours to spare, Early Nightly is up! Brian talks about his day with President Bush. Click the link to the right (below the advertisement) to watch.

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An exclusive interview with Pres. Bush

Just wanted to let readers know what you've probably already figured out by now -- because of the tight schedule and life inside "the bubble" with President Bush -- we are late with the Early Nightly today. Brian did record one during his morning with the president, and we're expecting to have it soon. To use TV-speak, Brian's exclusive interview with President Bush is a very late "crash." We hope to offer you a video preview in about an hour and we'll publish a complete transcript when it's available. In the meantime, here's a nice perspective photo shot by NBC White House Producer Antoine Sanfuentes this morning at St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans, where President Bush attended a prayer service to mark the Hurricane Katrina anniversary.

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The Big Easy: Where Nothing is Easy

After Nightly News and after our prime-time special concluded Monday night, we drove back to our hotel. Which also happens to be President Bush's hotel. Big mistake. In the old days (as recently as when I covered President Clinton), it wasn't unusual for people to enter the lobby of a major metropolitan hotel (depending on configuration) and have no clue that the Leader of the Free World was upstairs ordering room service. In the old days, it used to be cool to let it be known you were staying "at HIS hotel." No more. In the post-9/11 world, the very last place you want to stay is the president's hotel.

When we arrived last night, we were stopped at a steel barricade, manned by Secret Service, Louisiana State Police and National Guard troops with dogs. I explained that we simply wanted to go to our hotel rooms, and that I was joining up with the president's traveling "bubble" in the motorcade, early tomorrow. That's when a tall guy, straight-faced and apparently born completely without irony... approached our menacing rental car. He resembled both rare drawings of President Tyler and photos of Tommy Smothers. Anyway, we were "instructed" by this straight-faced guy with a blue blazer, an earpiece and male pattern baldness, that we "are holding due to a movement." 

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Live from New Orleans East

Many of you on the East Coast have now seen the first of this week's two Nightly News broadcasts from New Orleans. Here are a couple photos NBC News interns Kaylee Hartung (left) and Jed Strong (below) took on location.

30 minutes from now on the NBC television network, Brian anchors a primetime special called "Katrina: The Long Road Back." Here's a sneak-peak:

One year ago tonight, we were on the brink of a storm that would shake America like no other: A natural disaster, and the unnatural one that followed, made more tragic because it defied logic. Tonight at 8 p.m. EDT, Brian Williams reports from outside the Superdome in New Orleans, the very place that last August became a corner in hell. What you'll see tonight has never aired on network television -- some of the pictures were considered too raw to broadcast at the time of Katrina, and they may still be now, but NBC has chosen to air them tonight as part of the one-year anniversary of the storm, and the government response to it.

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WHAT YOU CAN'T SEE ON THE AIR

We try to be very careful in choosing the street, neighborhood or building that serves as the backdrop for our coverage, especially on a night like this one, considering the size of the live viewing audience and the level of interest. We are sensitive to charges that media portrayals of New Orleans are all alike, and we are always actively looking for "mixed progress" neighborhoods where there is work underway, and where people have decided to put down stakes and stay. We are in such a neighborhood tonight -- but the view changes (as it does all over this region) seemingly every few feet. The odor on the street is staggering (they are STILL finding bodies at the one-year mark) and the drive into this neighborhood is depressing. A police officer remarked, "this neighborhood's gone." But not everyone. Tonight we'll try to highlight the good (recovery) with the bad (retreat) while surrounded by the ubiquitous destruction that the waters caused.

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Going above and beyond for strangers

Someone much smarter than I once said: "You make a living by what you get, but you make a life by what you give."

I thought about that during a recent trip I took down south to Mississippi and Louisiana. I was traveling to shoot a Campbell Brown story that will likely air Tuesday on the anniversary of Katrina slamming into the Gulf Coast.

The story is a lovely one. I think it's our job, if even occasionally, to tell a story that describes the petals of Katrina and not just the thorns. God knows the thorns are plentiful and obvious and important. We won't learn how to not repeat the inexcusable mistakes of the disaster without the thorns, but it can't hurt to be reminded of the generosity of the angels who walk among us -- the petals. In this case, the petals are a few volunteers in Erie, Pa., who wanted to know what they could do to help.

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A nuclear submarine war?

A news story that hit the wires this weekend with little notice may in fact signal an uptick in the strategic chess game that is the Middle East.

Iran announced that it had fired an “anti-ship missile” from one of its Kilo-class submarines during a military exercise in the northern Arabian Sea not far from the Strait of Hormuz, the entrance to the Persian Gulf. 

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Early Nightly is up

OK, so it was a little longer than an hour. But you can now watch Brian's video by clicking the link to the right (below the advertisement).

We're hoping to get some dispatches from NBC correspondents in the Gulf region and will publish those as soon as we do.

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Early Nightly, meta-edition

No video for you to watch yet (we should have that in an hour or less), but since I tagged along on this week's trip to New Orleans for the Katrina anniversary, here's a photo of Brian and Subrata recording the Early Nightly on Tchoupitoulas St. outside Restaurant August.

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