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Jay Leno To Take Role as Trouper to the Troops
Friday, November 16, 2001
By Steve Gorman / Reuters

Comic and NBC’s “The Tonight Show” host, Jay Leno, to entertain U.S. soldiers, sailors deployed in the war against the TalibanPhoto Credit: Reuters.

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LOS ANGELES -- Reuters in Variety
As studio moguls and network executives brainstorm about how they might back the U.S. war effort, one of Hollywood’s most powerful forces is being deployed to the front lines — Jay Leno. The host of NBC’s “The Tonight Show” says he plans to travel overseas next month to entertain U.S. troops involved in the war in Afghanistan against Taliban forces and Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network.

His exact itinerary is unknown, Leno said, but one NBC official said the comedian is expected to visit troops in what the military describes as a “forward operating location.”

“We might be on an aircraft carrier, we might be on the ground, we might be in Saudi Arabia, we might be in Afghanistan,” Leno said earlier this week in a telephone interview.

“You’re in a war, and things change day to day, and if they say, ‘Oh, the place you were supposed to be, it blew up,’ Well, OK, we’ll go somewhere else.”

Highlights of his trip, which Leno expects to last three or four days, will be aired Dec. 26-28 on “The Tonight Show.”
(More: MSNBC.com News Source)
2001 © Reuters.

I seem to recall someone starting the USO like this back in WW II...
(Thanks for the memories, Bob),
Dan