[ applause ] >> we have time for a couple more questions with the men. >> bill henry, rhode island national guard. gentlemen, these days our veterans organizations are quickly depleting in membership. what would you say to the young veterans and young service members to encourage them to join these organizations so we can maintain the tradition and comradery with the military? >> veterans organizations, the membership is declining, what would you say to the younger generation to keep them active in veterans organizations, the legion, and others? >> i think they are fine organizations for one thing. they help veterans. they help people to assimilate. they help them in times of need.

they help them and their people get the message out, i think there will be a lot better response than there is. if they become self-serving, then they will decline and fall away. it's when they reach out is when they'll get more people interested in their organizations. >> thank you. how about one more question for this evening? sir? >> my daughter's best friend went through confirmation at temple. and a rabbi pulled out a torah to read from, and he said this is from a czechoslovakian village that was destroyed by the germans. they salvaged that and made the children read from the torah. do you think it's important for them to remember the stories in this generation and what's the best way to do that? >> did you hear that okay? >> no, i didn't. >> how important is it for future generations to remember these stories? >> it's a very good question. it's very important.

if we want to see a world where the tragedies of world war ii and especially the holocaust should never happen again, we must teach the young people, the future leaders of the world, the next generation to remember to speak about it and to know what happened. i've been speaking about this for the past 60 years. i've been invited several times to come to germany and speak there, invited by the german government, to speak there in the high schools. the highest grade before they go to college. we are going out next week on a

special trip to poland and to germany to make a video documentary, which most of it will be distributed or contributed to schools for the students to learn of what we saw, what happened, and so they can remember. and i want to tell you this. when i first came to this country, speaking about the holocaust was a no-no. nobody wanted to know. nobody wanted to hear. especially the older generations. if you want to know why, i can give you my opinion. because the older generation, especially the leaders in communities would have been asked right away what did you do during the war? where were you? did you speak out?

did you write in the papers? did you put pressure on the government to do something about it? and so they didn't speak about it. the younger people now want to know. we have requests from schools in the entire area. i will be speaking next week in three places before we go to europe. in three schools. two schools and one lawyer's office. people want to know. the young people want to know. and so it is our obligation to tell them, to teach them, and to let them know because in the future, they are the future. you see when you speak to young people in school, they will go

home to their parents and tell them what they heard in school today that this survivor came to school and they spoke about his experience, his life in the concentration camps and they get those. when the older generation, they don't go home to their children and lecture them. they keep it to themselves. so it's the important part to speak to the young people, to the leaders of the future. and again, so that this tragedy will never, never, ever happen again. it is a tragedy because we were told after world war ii, what was left in world war ii will be the end of it, but look what we have now. there's murder, killing of

civilian populations going on in a lot of places in the world. people still didn't learn. people killed their own neighbors, their own friends, in cases maybe their own relatives because they are on the different side of the political forum. look what's happening in syria. what happened in libya, what happened before in the former yugoslavia. in the balkan states. and who was there? you, the men in uniform. you have fought. you have protected people all over the world since america's existence. look at these men here. and i said sincerely and i mean it. i wouldn't be sitting here, my friends wouldn't be sitting here, if it wasn't for these men

that liberated us, that defeated the nazis and gave us a new life. gave us a new chance. i came to the united states with nothing, as a living skeleton. i kissed the ground when i came to this country. not because the ground is so sweet there, not because there was chocolate on the ground, but because this country gave me the opportunity that i could not find any place in the world. it gave me the opportunity to restore my life and to prove to the world that i'm not useless, that i didn't have to be killed, and that i can be effective. and thank god, i have three generations that are very

proudly, my son, i have three children, my son is over here. a very high position in the united states. my grandson, i have three children, three grandsons, and two great-grandsons. [ applause ] i defeated hitler. hitler wanted to kill me. i'm alive. he is dead. [ applause ] and i brought into this world very productive generations. i remember my youngest grandson is now in college, but when he

was about 10 years old, maybe even a little younger, he came over to me, and i don't know how it came to a young boy like this. and he says, grandpa, i'm happy, i'm very happy that you survived and that you're here. if you wouldn't have survived, i wouldn't be here either. >> thank you. >> and so i'm walking proud in this country and very grateful what it offered me in giving me a chance and giving me an opportunity. thank you all. [ applause ] >> when you think that during world war ii between 50 million and 70 million people were killed and you think about those who never had a chance after the war and what they could have done in their own professions, in their own lives.

so these guys obviously feel very blessed to be here and we're very blessed to have you as part of this panel. and ross and jimmy as well for the great job they did bringing your story to life. so thank you very much. we have one quick treat before you go. artist brian fox is a well-known local artist. brian came to me and said, you know, i would love to do a painting of major winters to help support your winters leadership project. and brian is here. i'd just like to share with you the painting that he did, which is just amazing. brian, come on up and as we say good-bye to everybody and thank our panel, brian will show us this amazing painting he did. as i said, mrs. winters just passed away yesterday. so she joined dick in heaven. what a great tribute that brian from fall river has done. [ applause ]

>> again, thank you so much for coming. we were happy you were able to brave the rain and the red sox 1-5 start. better days are ahead. thank you for coming and please enjoy the rest of your night. thank you. [ applause ] ♪ every weekend hear eyewitness accounts about american history and the people and events that shaped our nation. oral history is saturday at 8:00 a.m. eastern, sunday afternoon at 3:00, and again monday mornings at 4:00 eastern only on american history tv on c-span 3. learn more about our programs and our other series along with schedules and our online video archive at c-span.org/history. this week on c-span 3 in

prime time, american history tv. tonight reflections on world war ii. first, a look at censorship. in an hour three original members of t"band of brothers" from the 101st airborne division, american history tv in prime time all week on c-span 3. this is c-span 3 with politics and public affairs programming throughout the week and every weekend 48 hours of people and events telling the american story on american h history it tv. get our schedules and see past programs and join in the conversation on social media sites. american history tv in prime time continues tomorrow night on c-span 3. we start at 8:00 eastern with a look at the presidency and civil rights. we'll hear from historians, civil rights leader and former white house staff members about civil rights policy from fdr's

presidency to today. american history tv in prime time all week on c-span 3. next on american history tv a discussion on world war ii reporting and censorship and the experience of the associated press reporter ed kennedy. mr. kennedy was fired in 1945 after he defied a military embargo by reporting on germany's surrender a day before the official announcement. in early may of this year the associated press apologized for having fired kennedy. the national press club hosted this one-hour event. good evening and welcome to the national press club. i'm rick did you know ham, the washington pure owe bureau chief and in my extracurricular life i'm part of the educational and charitable arm of the national press club.

this event is mopping other things a fund-raiser for the press club journalism institute and the good programs we do so that every book you buy, not only will benefit the authors as it should but will benefit the national press club journalism institute. if you haven't already bought the book, i would recommend it. and that's the end of my ad there. i want to briefly introduce our guests to set the stage and then we have a special guest, the -- daughter of the man we will be talking about who will introduce our discussion. first up, i actually do have one short ad for the -- upcoming programs that we will be having training programs on may 22nd. we will be talking about building a community and building your brand on twitter. i'm going to be the instructor for that class. may 29, don't fear the math, turning numbers into stories and

stories into award winners. part of our data power journalism series. on june 12, social media trends for social media managers taught by amy webb of webb media who really is one of the leading trend spotters in the country. and june 25, excelling at data reporting. another part of our data power journalism series. with that, let me talk about the book a bit. and to me it is pretty personal. two summers ago i was driving around northern france with my wife and then 16-year-old nephew and we stopped at a small schoolhouse. we went into the museum there. at it was the table at which the germans surrendered, where general alfred yodel signed the official documents as the germans surrendered to the allies.

there were photographs of famous war correspondents such as andy rooney and -- ed kennedy of the associated press and that's -- where i started my personal search for the story of ed kennedy. it -- it told snippets at the museum of -- of -- this distinguished journalist and ever since then, i have been reading all i can culminating with this book we will be discussing today. and for people who don't know in -- in detail, ed kennedy was one of the most famous of the war correspondents in world war ii and may 7, he became the most famous or infamous american correspondent of the war. army officials that day allowed a select number of reporters, including him to witness the historic moment of the surrender but -- they instructed them that the story once was under strict

military embargo. and a move that was courageous but eventually costly and ed kennedy defied the embargo after the news was broken out of berlin. and -- and the scoop generated tons of interest and instant controversy. the rival news organizations, including hearst international news service were quick to protest and the ap first publicly rebuked and ultimately dismissed ed kennedy. a little bit of background on him during his time as a foreign correspondent, he covered the spanish civil war, rise of mussolini, unrest in greek, ethnic feuding in the balkans which we saw come back again 60 years later during world war ii, he reported from greece, from italy, from north africa, from the middle east, before going to cover the liberation and eventually the surrender negotiations.

so -- let me just introduce our panel and then i will turn the floor over to julie kennedy cochran for a few words. the -- we have the two authors of the forward to this book. john maxwell hamilton who is executive vice chancellor and provost at louisiana state university. better known to all of us as lsu. he came to lsu in 1992 after more than 20 years as a journalist and public servant. most of that time he worked on foreign affairs. both from the covering and the taking part of and before he assumed his current position at lsu he was the founding dean of the manship school of mass communication. he was a reporter for the milwaukee journal, christian science monitor, and abc radio. longtime commentator for marketplace which is broadcast nationally by public radio international. it is government work. he oversaw nuclear non-proliferation issues for house foreign affairs committee,

advised the head of the u.s. foreign aid program in asia during the carter administration and managed world bank program to educate americans about economic development. and in the course of his career he's gone to more than 50 countries in africa, asia, europe and latin america. so he has both covered the foreign news and he's also written extensively on foreign news gathering and sought to improve the quality of it. and next to him is a man that doesn't need an introduction but i will anyway. tom curley became vice president and chief executive officer of associated press, also known as ap. june 1, 2003, he's the 12th person to lead ap since its founding in 1846 and under his dynamic leadership, ap is evolving, has evolved from a wire service into an interactive global news network. and at the same time, that he worked on the changing

technology of news, he has been deeply committed to the people's right to know and one of the country's most visible and aggressive advocates for open government. and in my other extracurricular role as a member of the steering committee of reporters committee unforced error freedom of the press we have worked very closely with tom, establishing coalition of news organizations, and journalism related groups and pushing for accessible, accountable and open government. and just quick bio on him. he started early like i did in journalism. i started 17, he started at 15. writing for the easton express. pennsylvania hometown of easton. after graduation from rochester institute technology he got a job as an editor at the rochester times union. he worked his way up and up and up and by 1991, he was president and publisher of "usa today." the nation's largest selling daily newspaper.

he also -- from 1998 to 2003 was president -- vice president of senior vice president of the newspaper, owner, newspaper's owner, gannett. publisher of more than 100 newspapers in the united states. tom is retiring from ap at the end of the year. but we will talk about some -- breaking news from ap in a few minutes. with that, let me turn the floor over to julia kennedy cochran to talk to -- introduce the program and talk a little about her father and also thank members of the family for being here. we are very glad you are all here. thanks. julia? [ applause ] >> good evening and thank you all for being here. three or four years ago when i

started the project to publish my father's memoir, which he hadn't been able to get published during his lifetime, it was with great trepidation i wrote a letter to tom curley asking for the ap's help. because, as you know, it had been 60-odd years since my father had been fired by the ap and we had never heard anything from them about it. in fact, i myself worked for the ap for three years right after college as a reporter on the new york city desk and nobody ever spoke to me about it during that time. so i expected that either they would ignore me or just tell me that they weren't interested in helping me. it was with pleasant surprise that i found that tom was -- was very willing to help me and allowed me to use the ap archives and for that, i also thank valerie who is head of the

ap corcoran archives, to do research on my father's time at the ap. then i was surprised to find that tom agreed to co-write the introduction to the book. and it is a very powerful introduction for any of you who have already read it. drawing on a lot of ap corporate communications, internal communications, and material from the national archives that i didn't even know existed. then last week, the ap issued its public apology for firing my father over the surrender incident. my phone began ringing off the hook. i am really surprised at how much interest there still is in this old story. i guess it really just shows that freedom of the press is still an important issue these days. thank you very much. [ applause ]

>> i would like to just mention that several members of my family are here tonight. they include my husband, my daughter emma, and her husband, steve. and my dear cousins, thurston balfour and renee. thurston is probably the only person in the room who knew my father during world war ii. so -- he has talked to me a lot about that. so -- thank you very much. [ applause ] >> thanks, julia and thanks to everyone from the family for being here. why don't i -- before starting to ask questions just turn the floor over and whichever order you would like just to -- start things out and then i will -- i will start with some questions. >> good. i will be briefer than i thought i would be because you covered some of the points that -- i was thinking of making. this -- this story is one of

great drama. and i think -- and as kennedy himself says in the book and as tom and i try to highlight in the introduction, it was a monumental news story in which a reporter had a choice and -- part of that choice was deciding whether to honor the pledge that had all of these 17 reporters who had gone to ream would honor about not breaking the story until they were allowed to. or deciding to break it because they felt that the reasons for the embargo had been obviated by the government. the government pledged -- roosevelt pledged the censorship would only be applied to stories that had military significance. whereas, in fact, this was a story that was being held, that is the announcement of the d-day

-- sorry, ve-day was being held because the russians wanted to hold it back day so they would be able to announce it simultaneously. that was a political reason, not a military reason. and so as a result of that, ed kennedy had to decide what he was going to do with the story. and he came back and he was very angry. he became -- he was -- he was alerted to the fact that the germans announced -- german government announced over the radio that the war was over and troops should prepare to step down in germany. it was where the german government at the end of the war was. it was virtually -- at this point, more than virtually, they had really lost, in the the radio station was controlled by the allies. and so from kennedy's point of view, the war really was over and the embargo had also been broken. so there were two issues involved. one was the embargo had been broken because there had been an announcement and second of all,

the embargo was being driven by political considerations and not military ones. he wept to the censor, tried to reach the chief censor and then the operational censor -- i'm sorry, he first tried to reach the head of all of the information and couldn't get him on the phone and then went 0 to the censor. and the censor said, sorry, it's not released. which is what censors do. it would be impossible to do that. and off he went. and thought it over and what the censor didn't know is he had access to a military line to london. and was able to use that line to send -- it was a very sketchy line. it didn't work all that well. the voices faded in and out. he got ahold of london and told them the war had been -- the surrender had been -- germans surrendered and

told him to send the story to new york. which they did. and so a day earlier than what would have happened otherwise, the united states knew the war was over. the ap's first reaction in -- right afterwards was to be proud of what he had done. but because of a variety of pressures that came to bear, changed his mind. recalled kennedy. the military in the meanwhile revoked his credentials. they revoked all of the ap's credentials but that was short-lived but they didn't give kennedy back his credentials. they even started a process, started an investigation, and if you go and look at the national archives which we did, wonderful stuff in there about how they were running around trying to find out how he did it. they couldn't figure out how he got the line. and what is particularly wonderful are the number of journalists who wrote in and said that kennedy should be punished. in fact, by an extraordinary vote, i don't remember the number.

47-2 or something. all the reporters, except for those two, signed a petition condemning what kennedy had done because they didn't like the idea that he had broken the embargo, and, of course, they're sitting there without having the story. "the new york times" reporter drew middleton actually said that it was the biggest, greatest double-cross in the history of journalism. which is an interesting thing for a journalist to say because we all know in journalism school you don't say something is the greatest and biggest or anything else but he was pretty goddamned mad. so he -- he made this rather hyperbolic statement. tom believes that, in fact, the times was probably clearly one of the more powerful forces that was moving against kennedy. at any rate, he was brought back to the united states, recalled, and there wasn't a summary execution. he was fired slowly. and essentially disappeared from the ap. he could have, i think, is