Scoop

The voice was faint, muffled: "This is Paris calling. . . ." The Associated Press deskman in London, answering the telephone, then heard: "This is Ed Kennedy . . . Germany has surrendered unconditionally. That's official. Make the date Reims, France, and get it out."

Then came the details, dictated slowly and carefully. Dark-haired, alert, Brooklyn-born Edward Kennedy, 39, chief of A.P. war coverage in Europe, had the scoop of a lifetime. Midway in his story, the telephone connection faded out--or was cut off.

Across the Atlantic the story sped (British censors do not interfere with stories merely being relayed through London). In Manhattan, where Kennedy's story arrived at 9:27 a.m., top A.P. executives huddled for eight minutes at the cable desk, debating whether to send the bulletin on to the A.P.'s 2,500 clients. They considered the risks if the story didn't stand up.*

They also considered Kennedy's dependability during his 13 years of reporting for the A.P.: in ten years abroad, he had covered the Spanish Civil War, Hitler's invasion of the Sudetenland, the Libyan campaign; had been shot at in Syria, Sicily and Italy. They knew about his tilts with censors, too: in the invasion of southern France, he had been suspended briefly, along with four other newsmen, for running off in a jeep to make a "juncture" with the northern armies at Nantes, ten days before the official juncture. For that, his friends named him "Task Force Kennedy."

Weighing all this, and satisfied that Kennedy's story had too many details to be suspect, A.P. Assistant General Manager Alan Gould gave the go-ahead. Then the A.P. sat back, waiting for the U.P., I.N.S. and SHAEF to catch up. Instead SHAEF called the story unauthorized, clamped a news embargo on the A.P.

The A.P. objected strenuously: "the right of peoples everywhere 'to know' is at stake." Roy Howard, boss of the rival U.P., wired President Truman, urging that the suspension be withdrawn, lest the A.P. be "condemned unjustly," as he had been "pilloried personally" for jumping the gun in 1918.

After six hours, the ban was lifted for all A.P. men except Kennedy. He did not have to worry: his superiors were claiming for him "one of the greatest [news beats] in newspaper history."

* After last fortnight's false armistice from San Francisco, Britain's Newspaper Proprietors Association recommended a Fleet Street boycott of A.P. news.

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