probably fair to say, saved his job if he had recanted. if he had said i really made a mistake and i shouldn't have done it. this he refused to do. and so if you buy the argument that tom and i make which is he did the right thing, we believe it is an act of great journalistic courage, and it also has lessons for today because some of the things that made this particular story possible don't exist. you know. the -- military censors can't control lines the way they used to because of changes in technology and so forth. but as tom and anybody else who is in journalism knows, the government all the time is trying to withhold information, oftentimes claiming it is national security when it is really something else. before i turn the table over to tom, i want to say that it is also a great act of courage on his part that the ap has now issued a correction. it would have been very easy not to have ever said anything about

this, let the book come out, and not worry about what happened and let it just be an episode that goes down in history as -- you can have various points of view. tom has been a very creative leader at the a.p., and one of the things he has done, by the way, is created the archives. and anyone that is interested in writing about journalism and journalism history, finds that repository of papers which is growing all the time thanks to the good work of valerie and staff. i think we all owe the ap and for tom in particular for making sure that happened. >> when i got to ap in 2003, the vice president of communications suggested that we needed to update our history. the history of ap was last written in 1940.

she said the reason it hadn't been updated was because of this incident. i had no knowledge of the incident until that moment. and i said, well, why don't we do some reporting and find out what happened and let's get to the bottom of it but move forward. we just can't stop history because we don't like how one story turned out. well, several times during the process of writing the book, i was told this is really bad and this one wasn't going to go down very well. i said, would somebody please get the facts and let's come forward. and so knowing full well in the history of 160 some years that any incident, including this, would be all of two paragraphs in the book and it was and it still didn't seem satisfying. when julia's letter came in and announced that there was a manuscript, that opened another door. it was pretty clear that this was the moment to find out what happened.

and the only thing that was crazy that happened along the way is that jack promised julia that he would get someone famous to write the introduction. he clearly failed terribly at this, but he came to me and asked if i would be interested and first sized me up to see where i was going to come down on this issue. i knew where i was going to come down on what kennedy had done and reporting, we had done enough of that investigations to know where things stood on that. but i was fascinated to try to figure out what management knew, when it knew it, who was involved, and how it played out. and the story turned out to be chilling, frankly, in every turn. we create add time line. we went back through the facts. the correspondence hour by hour day by day, and we constructed a case. at no point was ed kennedy ever treated well and it was a great

tragedy. he was ap's lead reporter. he was the front line bureau chief who managed the correspondence across the front as the story moved from north africa, italy, and finally into paris. he was the chosen person to go to witness the signing. and there had been a false report of the german surrender a day earlier and when the word came in, when he got through on the phone to london, the desk held the story for eight minutes, clearly talked it over, they put his bi-line on it, in effect, told the world this time the story is true. the war is over. and so it was a compelling story in every aspect of this. and it certainly was compelling to look at it from a management

standpoint and to go back through the lessons that could have been learned and should have been learned and it seemed to me that there was only one way to go. mistakes are made. bad mistakes are made. but if you don't learn from them, that's the greatest mistake of all. so it was time to get this out, put it on the table, and move forward. and this work, this effort, this collaboration, has led to many good things, including the fact that several new developments or several new pieces of information have come forward even in the last week as the reports of this book and this incident have come out and helpful information, things that we previously didn't know. so truth is revealed incrementally and then julia has generously agreed to donate ed

kennedy's paperwork to the ar rifs. archives. i think we've come full circle and done the right thing and it's very important for ap to have this case put on the record and finally looked at and closed, in a sense, so that we can move forward as we should. >> i wanted to ask you, tom, you're talking about lessons. what are some of the key lessons for -- that ap learned out of this? and then what are some of the lessons for modern day journalism? it just seems, even with the story ap had this past week where the government wanted ap to hold on, you are having similar issues with, if not censorship, cases of national security being invoked by the government. >> sure. the security journalism issues are, in some ways, timeless and this week has been another week where there have been lots of

backing and forthing and lots of reports and then things that are made up by others and erupt into a public uproar as well. but in this case, the facts are clear. one of the things is clearly you look at the facts, you put them in the public, and you find out what you did right, what you did wrong, and then you go forward. you don't just put things in the closet and try to hold them back. the other thing is to try to understand who is in charge. and ap hailed ed kennedy for about 36 hours. there was an uproar from the journalism community. the board lead at the time, at the time that he was called the president, went public without talking, we think, to management, and he certainly didn't talk to ed kennedy. and that knee-jerk reaction led to a public repudiation of

kennedy in the worst possible way. but if you look at what the desk did, what ed kennedy did, there were a lot of lessons that were right. i spent more time as an editor than a reporter so i have good things to say about editors. they do matter, they count for a lot, and good editors make a big difference. clearly in this case we had our lead reporter on the story. his name, his background, his scope of coverage experience lent credibility as no other. he thought about it. he never made a knee-jerk reaction. he waited 96 minutes from the time the germans' announcement began before he published and he was very thoughtful. he went to the military. he told them the story had to go. and even then he went back to his room for 15 minutes. so the desk handled it well. i think ed kennedy handled it well and you trust your reporters.

>> and i wanted to ask jack a little bit about the theology about all of this and in my own research i've found a new yorker article contemporaneous talking about the controversy and the debate, which sounds like it could be something in the new yorker in 2012. but it says, in part, whether a promise extorted as this one was and an airplane several thousand feet up is a moral question, i suppose that kennedy should have refused to promise anything and thus made sure no newspaper event would want to miss but i can't imagine any correspondent doing it. i do not think kennedy imperiled the lives of any allied soldiers by sending the story as some of the critics have charged. he probably saved a few because he prolonged the shootings. any way, i wanted to see if you could take us back in time, put yourself in ed kennedy's

position and sort of the talk about the theological arguments of embargoes and the right of the public in the world to know. >> theology is certainly my specialty. so -- i would say -- first of all, i would say you probably wouldn't see a story like that in the new yorker because it was by a.j. and there isn't anybody as good as a.j. but i think that's a very good way to analyze a key part of this. that's a very weak, if you think about it -- a rather weak paragraph in the story, which is -- this is, of course, the achilles heel of his story. he gave his pledge he wouldn't accomplish it and then he did. he broke the pledge. but the thing you need to understand about liebling and kennedy, he was extremely frustrated by what he had seen and that article is an

expression of the frustration he was seeing -- not just kennedy becomes an exemplar of the problem he had seen during the war. and so he's defending kennedy the way he should have because the government systematically had been doing and so willing to become compliant, as they were constantly saluting, that they got out of the habit of doing it for themselves. the book, the manuscript that julia has brought forward, her father's book, is of -- there's quite a large number of books written by war correspondents during that war and some of them are very well known. but this book deserves to be up there with the best of them. and there are two reasons for that. one is it's actually a very good -- a very good expression of what it's like to have been a war correspondent.

during that time. he was everywhere, as you pointed out, in the beginning. he was in europe before the war started. he was a hell of a good reporter and was given a lot of responsibility and was in kbl danger from time to time. he had seen a lot of the war and was able to write about it with great humanity. so just as a good story by a war reporter, he did an excellent job. the second part is, as you might guess, being sacked by the ap, he writes consistently throughout the book about the problems that he had had. and you can imagine him sitting there in paris. here is the story that war is over and he wants to tell the story and they won't even let him tell that story. and he is so damn mad and fed up that he decides he's going to run the story. he's done the right thing. he's checked with the censors.

he thinks the grounds for withholding the story are incorrect and you can see that this is not just an act that one day he was upset. you see this as years of his being frustrated. finally, kind of erupting in this volcanic response. not volcanic in the sense that it wasn't well thought out but that there's a lot behind it. last night when we did this event in new york, he had gotten in trouble in cairo for resisting the censors and caused -- and had gotten the story smuggled out or taken out. so from the very beginning of the war, he had a history of resisting. he also got in trouble because he got to paris before the army did. he had ended up and gotten ahead of the military and the military was angry that he had gotten there first. so i think what liebling was expressing and what kennedy was expressing was months of

frustration. >> and if i could ask either of you to talk about some of the early coverage that made his career, and then if it's not too much to ask on the other side, what happened in the post ap career. >> well, even today there are few people in the diplomatic corps or anywhere else -- he who have had the breadth of experience that ed kennedy -- we talked a little bit about it but he covered the middle east, he covered the balance kins. he was based in cairo. he had enormous war experience. he got there in 1929 and stayed there until his pockets got empty, went back in the '30s, covered the spanish war and right on through. there were few people who had experienced this much, knew as

much, and could report as well. he was the guy and he was on the front line time and time again. i want to point out that his successor, the man who took his place, was a guy named wes gallagher, who was also a predecessor of mine and wes' son brian is with us tonight. and wes took ed kennedy's place and became general manager of the associated press. it's so it's clear that wes was on a track, an incredible track, and he was responsible for some of the most difficult logistics of war coverage. in the aftermath, our understanding is that cooper helped ed find a job with a publisher who supported ed and ed lived a more quiet life in california and julia has told us that he did a lot of teaching and did a lot of mentoring but

clearly he loved europe, he loved a big story and it was a huge adjustment from what he had done to go to a small paper. this is a guy that sought out europe, stayed there and came home twice in at the point years. it was a long way from there to santa barbara. >> i was wondering if when both of you were doing research if there was anything that you discovered in addition to ed kennedy and the associated press about the military or political figures that you thought were new or new insights into the political leaders or military leaders at the time. >> i didn't. i think general allen, who was the chief information guy, there were lots of people who didn't

think he was a great guy who were journalists. so i don't think -- i think more of what you get out of this book is -- what you really get is a sense of what you like to do about this job. what you really get is a sense of what it was like to be there every day and to work your way through the war up north along the coast and eventually up to paris. i say one thing just about this, though. i think there's a lot of work to be done on world war ii and world war ii coverage. and i don't think we still have a good way of describing how difficult it was and how bad it was. the military had two tactics that they used to try to control reporters. one was -- and i know this will be harassing to people.

but one was getting them to go and sit with a bunch of people in trenches to write stories about them to be sent home, make people feel good about the kids in the trenches. a little of that went a long way. it was a good way to build support for the war but not good way to let people know what was really happening in terms of strategy and all that. the second thing that would happen is giving them opportunities to write first person stories. it's very interesting that in most stories, at least in the way it was when we started out, you weren't supposed to write first person. but because the reporters had to find something to write about, they put them up in an airplane the best thing we included in here, a reporter one time got a little bit of shrapnel in his rear end and he said, now i've got a story that will be in the front page and he said, this is how it feels to be wounded. some of that stuff can be very good.

one reporter did a story that everybody should read but it's forgotten, and he wrote it when he was in the hospital, it was truly great reporting. he was also a fabulous reporter. really knew war. but it was very hard to do your job in the war and the military was very adept at keeping you from writing very big stories and the reporters on the other side, because they were patriots, it wasn't a famous story when patton slapped the young soldier in the sick bay. in fact, that wasn't reported by a reporter in the field. it was reported here in washington by a columnist who disliked roosevelt and saw it as a way to embarrass roosevelt. so the ap, like everybody else, had problems with this and honestly i have a great deal of respect for kennedy but he wrote some of these stories, too. that's what you had to write if

it was going to get published. but i think there's a lot of work to be done to really chronicle the limited information that we got and be able to show that in quantitative ways. >> tom, i was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what it was like to be the war correspondent, whether it's in the trenches with the troops, whatever you were trying to do, and how life is different now for better or for worse for ap's war correspondents. >> well, it's very difficult now, as you know. times have changed in the sense that the journalist is more the target. and security is a very, very grave concern. and so i think we've seen an evolution over the last couple of decades to where the journalist is clearly in country after country and after

place after place being targeted to be taken out. we've had many incidents -- we had somebody who suffered a fractured skull last week covering a demonstration, a cameraman. and had to have a plate inserted in his head. so the front lines are still the front lines and i think they are still as dicey as they ever have been and of course now the battle lines are very different. it's less state to state conflict and more guerrilla warfare and it terrorism acts. we have moved to a very different and dangerous phase. >> and i wanted to say, if anyone in the audience has questions, i want to open it up so you can ask both of these distinguished gentlemen any question that you would like. anyone? go ahead. >> hi, gentlemen. would the ap itself have been subject to review from the

military if they had stood up for mr. kennedy, if they had instead said, as an institution, do you feel that they were were they concerned about do you feel they were concerned about their own reputation as an institution, or was it strictly just a sense that there's a journalist code about all being on the same page? >> well, in this case they were certainly subject to punishment and the credentials for all ap for a brief period of time for the european theater which would have been very disastrous. so that threat was real and it got -- it seemed to me in this stream of what became the anti-kennedy story, that became the vote by which management could drive towards the ownership side of the kennedy position and say, we have to side with management which jumped 0 out in front of

attacking kennedy in the name of making sure we have access to that. but the credentials were restored very quickly for ap. they were not restored for ed kennedy. and ed kennedy also faced possibly faced court-martial the correspondents were given military rank and they were subjected to the military code. so that was another big concern in this case. >> okay. anyone else here? yes? >> kennedy notified the london desk of the existence of the embargo, that has been one of the criticisms all of these years and in a piece of "the huffington post," a stars and stripes correspondent had been there prior to kennedy and the 16 others and there are some responses to this book and your public apology in that piece that ran yesterday and there are some valid points in there.

one of which kennedy sufficiently advised his superiors of this embargo. >> so that's an interesting problem. today if you have a story that is like this, you can actually talk to your editor probably because of satellite phones. in those days you couldn't send a cable saying i want to talk to you about a story that i'd like to break the embargo on because it's not practical. the censor wouldn't let you send it. and the line between london and paris wasn't a good line. it's not like you could call new york and talk it over with them. now, the argument has been made, with by somebody last night, actually, that this is breaking the embargo.

here's the story. that's not a very -- that doesn't tell you very much about why you broke the embargo and didn't have very much time to dictate the story because of the quality of the line. so you could -- i guess he could have put something on the top of the story but you have to understand that the commune keags in those days didn't allow the back and forth with the home office like you would have today. >> let me make a couple of points. first of all, whatever the terms were of the pledge, 18 hours passed. general eisenhower could not even follow the commander in chief's orders in this case. general eisenhower felt the need to get out the word that the killings should stop. there was no question about the truth of the story, the authenticity of it, the fact that it was an unconditional surrender. the rules of the game changed

but once the story was broken or the embargo was broken and there was repeated broadcasts under many german communications methods, that enabled kennedy to decide that it was time to go forward. kennedy could not call new york without going through the censor. so that route was out. but i think you have to take a step back and look at this culturally. he did what he's done throughout the war. he was the guy on point. he operated by himself, got the stories out time and time again. all true. everybody trusted him. got them to the desk from the field, and they moved him. also, the people on the desk had expected the story.

they knew something was afoot. the rumor had broken the day before. a false story had come out. everybody expected this. so there was great and it tis persuasion. the delay and the fact that the allied command couldn't even hold the orders of churchill and truman i think puts this in a different perspective. what we're talking about is a story that is true and by getting the word out, they were telling people to stop the killing. so the stakes were rather profound. >> did ap take any action against anybody else involved in this, in london or in new york? >> no. however, i can tell you from the stories inside ap that some people became very paralyzed by it and were upset by it and reacted differently throughout their careers. >> this is london calling.

>> i'm afraid it's my desk but that's the end of that. >> there have been stories from people who were assigned great reports have come in, especially in the last week, that so and so would not move certain stories of a certain magnitude, that they had to be passed to somebody else to edit and move and somebody was hired in a bureau job and i won't mention the bureau and just recounted this incident to the journalists who started on his first day on the job in the ap. so there were stories passed on through decades and that happens in all journalism institutions and in all professions. a lot of the medical profession is an oral culture and we do, too.

the rules are established in the hallways and you learn the ropes and these stories were passed on and what happened. and that's why there's been a great outpouring. i've heard from hundreds of people since this story hit the wires. >> why did the russians want to delay the announcement for a day? >> because they wanted to get equal credit for winning the war. >> they wanted to announce it simultaneously. they didn't want it announced only by the french and british and americans. they wanted to have time to be part of the announcement and they were not there in the room when this happened. >> there was a russian general there. so that's why i don't understand, because the surrender -- >> right. actually, i didn't remember that. but in any event, they weren't ready to make their announcement yet and so they wanted a coordinated announcement and