The Daily Nightly began on May 31, 2005. As Brian wrote in his first post it aims to provide a narrative of the broadcast day and a window into the editorial process at NBC Nightly News. Brian weighs in every weekday and NBC News correspondents and producers post regularly.
Brian Williams became the seventh anchor and managing editor in the history of NBC Nightly News on December 2, 2004. Read his full biography.
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Good day from New York on a very busy news day.
Today's announcement from the FBI that it had broken-up a plot to blow-up the aircraft fuel supplies at New York's JFK Airport was another one of those reminders of what an attractive terror target New York continues to be.
Living here you become used to police occasionally checking your briefcase for explosives as you head to the subway turnstile. Most of us no longer do a double take when police anti-terror squads in helmets, flak jackets and automatic weapons in their hands suddenly appear in front of popular tourist attractions. Even the regular convoys of 25 police cars that criss-cross the city with lights and sirens massing on high-valued "target" are more an object of amusement then anything else. My wife and I call it "cops on parade."
Intellectually we all understand that there is a good chance we will be hit again, but yet we tend sometimes to live our lives in a collective sense of denial. The alternative: dwelling on the possibility of another day like September 11th, 2001, would be crippling.
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Link to thisAfter arriving at 2 a.m. back in New York from our trip to Chicago (hint: O'Hare, American, LaGuardia, broken-down air transportation system and the soft bigotry of low expectations) and following some emergency dental work this morning (always awesome), my goal tonight is to get on and off the air without incident (talk about low expectations). Somehow we'll manage to cover all that lays before us following our afternoon editorial meeting: the continuing TB story, the start of hurricane season (is NOLA's system of levees and creative, Rube Goldberg plumbing ready? And for what?), Richard Engel in Lebanon, David Gregory on a major departure from the Bush inner circle -- and a conversation with a guy who knows about what happens when that White House circle gets smaller.
Since it's Friday night we'll air our Making A Difference segment, and please take a few moments to read about today's Medal of Honor recipient. I say it every day: there are 110 men alive today who have been so honored. Please honor them by taking a moment to read what they did for their country when the moment arose.
Have a great weekend, and we'll see you Monday. Please join us for Nightly News tonight.
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Every weekday for 110 straight days we will feature a different living recipient of the Medal of Honor. These are the men who have received their nation's highest military honor. Brian is a board member of the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation. The words and photos are courtesy of Artisan Books, publishers of "Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty by Peter Collier with photographs by Nick Del Calzo.
GARY B. BEIKIRCH
Sergeant, U.S. Army Company B, 5th Special Forces Group, 1st Special Forces
Gary Beikirch followed his high school sweetheart to college in 1965. Within two months, she broke up with him, and he dropped out, figuring to get even with her by enlisting in the Green Berets. During his advanced training, Beikirch decided to become a medic.
By the summer of 1967, he was in Kontum Province, Vietnam, as part of the 4th Special Forces Group. His 12-man team was assigned to Camp Dak Seang, a village of Montagnard tribesmen in the Central Highlands -- a beautiful jungle environment of triple canopy forests, where tigers and enemy soldiers hid in the lush vegetation. The Montagnards were fiercely independent fighters who wore loincloths and had aligned themselves with the U.S. war effort. Accompanied by the Special Forces team, they conducted raids into Laos to disrupt North Vietnamese supply routes down the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
Early on April 1, 1970, a huge force of North Vietnamese attacked Camp Dak Seang. The Special Forces team called in gunships whose constant fire over the next few hours was the only thing that kept the camp from being overrun.
Discuss (9 comments) Email this | Link to thisBrian will be in the anchor chair tonight, but Chief Pentagon Correspondent Jim Miklaszewski delivers today's vlog.
Click here for his early look at tonight's rundown, featuring a story from Jim on U.S. options in Iraq if the "surge" strategy isn't effective.
Discuss (1 comments) Email this | Link to thisGoogle Maps new feature, "Street View," has a predecessor in the intelligence community. Street View incorporates stills taken by Google staff into their well known satellite photo/map format.
The CIA has been doing the same thing for years, to help their officers familiarize themselves with cities and other areas they had never visited and that may be closed to Americans.
The CIA would take satellite photos of an area and then create 3D videos. They'd also add to the experience by inserting stills their foreign agents had taken at ground level, or that the agency would have acquired elsewhere. Officers about to visit a new city could then sit in front of a screen and take a "virtual walk" down a street they had never visited, using a joystick much like a teenage boy would with a video game, crossing streets and turning corners.
The technology has existed for nearly 15 years. CIA visualization specialists talked with NBC's Jamie Gangel and me back in 1993.
Discuss (5 comments) Email this | Link to thisEditor's note: Tonight's "Making a Difference" story was suggested by KNBC reporter Jinah Kim, who first met Kellie Lim in April and brought her story to the network's attention. We asked her to blog about Kellie in this space. Tonight on the broadcast, NBC's George Lewis will introduce you to this remarkable young lady.
Whenever I'm exhausted from working too much, or my back aches, or I'm angry at the world -- I think of Kellie Lim. And then the complaint that was at the tip of my tongue does a guilty retreat.
Kellie is truly one of the most amazing people I've ever met. I had the pleasure of meeting her when I interviewed her for her first national television debut. We met her at UCLA in mid-April and found a tranquil garden setting where we could begin recording our interview. My photographer sat her down on a flat rock and we started talking. Halfway through our 20-minute discussion, she shifted in her seat, a slightly pained look on her face. I said, "Is everything OK, Kellie?" And she replied,"Oh yes - it's just that it's a little uncomfortable for me to sit on hard surfaces for long periods of time with my prosthetics." Feeling terrible for not noticing this earlier, I apologized and told her we could move locations. But she protested with a big, friendly smile, saying, "I need to get used to uncomfortable. After all, I'm going to be 'on my feet' all day tending to patients!" This positive, "don't worry about me" attitude is what defines Kellie.
Discuss (7 comments) Email this | Link to thisEditor's note: If you missed Kevin's report on Chicago's cicada invasion on Thursday's broadcast, click here to watch.
If you have been anywhere near Chicago lately, or have spoken to anyone who lives here, you'll know the sound of love is in the air... and it is deafening. Billions (with a capital B) of huge, beady, red-eyed cicadas are emerging from the ground where they've been hiding for the last 17 years. And they've got one thing in mind... making more cicadas.
As Brian found out when he spoke to Spike O'Dell on WGN Radio's morning show, cicadas are the talk of the town. There are special "Cicada Sales" at local businesses, schools are holding special "Cicada Field Trips," and some menus feature"Sautéed Cicadas" for those brave enough to nibble. They are apparently full of protein, and taste kind of nutty.
Discuss (107 comments) Email this | Link to thisTwo hours from airtime and a dark air mass has just rolled in off Lake Michigan, dumping rain on the beautiful skyline of Chicago. As I just told the afternoon host on WLS Radio, we need everyone here to hope for clearing right as we go on the air, so we can show off this beautiful city for all it's worth. Right now, the radar is showing a bad storm in Joliet and an even bigger one in Kankakee, which doesn't bode well for us. Between the deluge of cicadas here (our closing story tonight) and the sudden downpour -- Chicago is throwing us challenges today. We will rise to the challenges and conquer.
I spent the afternoon at our NBC Station here, WMAQ-TV -- much of it with two of my absolute favorite local anchors anwhere in the country: Warner Saunders and Allison Rosatti (they've posted some video of chats with Brian on the WMAQ-TV Web site). They are among the very best there are. Perhaps because Allison's son is also a baseball pitcher, we've always gotten along very well. We taped a few local promos together -- and had a lot of fun in the process. I also saw my friend Bob Sirott of WMAQ's anchor staff (a great broadcaster and former CBS Newser) and I was stunned at how much he's aged. I'm not serious, of course, but he seems to read this blog every day and it will horrify him to read that.
Discuss (22 comments) Email this | Link to thisShortly after you leave the Charlotte-Douglas International Airport in Charlotte, N.C., you swing onto The Billy Graham Parkway. He is arguably this city's favorite -- and certainly most famous -- son. So it is no surprise that today's dedication of the Billy Graham Library is earning live television coverage here.
On Wednesday, I had the opportunity to tour the 40,000-square-foot library with Franklin Graham who now heads his father's ministry. As you walk beneath the 40-foot cross that frames the entrance, you are first struck that there are no statues or busts of Billy Graham. Though in many ways it is similar to presidential libraries, the elder Graham insisted this would not be a monument or tribute to him, but rather an instrument with which to further his life-long message about Jesus Christ as a path to salvation.
Discuss (10 comments) Email this | Link to thisShe was polite about not checking her watch, but I could tell she was concerned about the time. Michelle Obama had spent the day campaigning in Iowa and now she was spending time with me, but her heart was already headed to Chicago where her two little girls were waiting for Mommy. As a mother of five children under the age of 12, it's a tug I know well -- you've memorized the flight number and departure time of the last plane home.
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