Geraldo Rivera reporting from beyond time and space

NEW YORK -- Fox News Channel said war correspondent Geraldo Rivera had made an "honest mistake" in his reporting of a friendly fire incident in Afghanistan. The network said Dec. 26 it had accepted Rivera's explanation and planned no further action.

Rivera's reporting surrounding a Dec. 5 incident in Kandahar where three Americans were accidentally killed by a U.S. bomb has been called into question.

The next day, Rivera reported that he had "walked over the spot where the friendly fire took so many of our men and the mujahadeen yesterday. It was just, the whole place, just fried, really, and bits of uniforms and tattered clothing everywhere. I said the Lord's Prayer and really choked up."

The Baltimore Sun later reported that Rivera had filed his report from Tora Bora, hundreds of miles from the Kandahar incident.

Fox spokesman Robert Zimmerman said Rivera never claimed to be in Kandahar. The Associated Press

Jan. 3, 2002

Dear Patty,

This is Geraldo Rivera, reporting from Neptune. I figured out the secrets of the space-time continuum a few weeks ago over a couple of Amstel Lights in a chi-chi officer's club where everybody knows my name. Once I added up the X's and O's, I couldn't wait to get out of Afghanistan.

Envious, nitpicky "journalists" who will never be as famous as I am are giving me grief again. I've had all the Geraldo-bashing one Geraldo can take in a lifetime, especially mine.

OK, so I honestly, mistakenly reported that I got choked up saying the Lord's Prayer over the "hallowed ground" where "friendly fire took so many of our men and the mujahedeen yesterday." So that bombing actually occurred near Kandahar, and I was a couple hundred miles away near Tora Bora. I did so say the Lord's Prayer. To myself. Prayer is a private thing.

I just confused one bombing with another. Climbing in caves that could have been dangerous if only terrorists had been in them gave me shellshock. My producer didn't like climbing in first, but which of us would America miss the most? Admit it, I looked dashing, like Lawrence of Arabia.

OK, so the bombing incident I confused with the Kandahar bombing hadn't actually happened yet. That's where we space-time travelers can really get confused. We space-time traveler media stars can end up reporting things that haven't happened yet. Sometimes we even report things that didn't happen, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't have.

Some have criticized me for carrying a handgun while reporting the war in Afghanistan. They sputter something about the Geneva Convention protecting journalists as noncombatants. The Taliban were killing journalists, for gosh sakes. What if they had mistaken me for one?

Besides, I might need that gun. Who deserves to be the one to knock off bin Laden more than me? He bombed New York City, my town. Nobody gets away with that.

I am a lawyer. I passed the bar exam. I know you're not supposed to take the law into your own hands. But he really irks me, he and reporters that let the facts fuzzy up the big picture.

Bin Laden and sissy reporters can't hold me back.

Right now, I'm here on Neptune searching for Adolph Hitler's secret bunker. I'm breaking in. Can you hear the door falling down? Sorry the picture is blurry but we're broadcasting over millions of miles of the void.

That's a surprise -- Al Capone is here.

Hitler, too, sitting in the corner, watching Fox News, of course. Gosh he looks old for 112.

"Hey, Hitler!"

No answer. It's gonna be another tough interview. Good thing I brought my gun.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.