For the gaunt, intense Kennedy, it became the scoop from Hell. Allied headquarters stripped away his press credentials, denounced him personally for defying the rules, and banished him to New York, where the AP fired him. Meanwhile, 54 rival reporters who had abided by the news embargo signed a statement branding Kennedy a double-crosser. The label lingered. In 1960, Walter Cronkite of CBS, a former United Press war correspondent, refused to stand when Kennedy offered his hand, according to a journalist who witnessed the encounter.
Kennedy tried for years to repair his damaged reputation, publishing a lengthy self-defense in the Atlantic ("I'd Do It Again," August 1948.) Among other points, Kennedy argued that Ike had not ordered the blackout for legitimate reasons of military security. He had done so for political reasons that did not justify censorship. Soviet dictator Josef Stalin wanted to stage a second surrender ceremony in Berlin - to sell the illusion that the Nazis had surrendered first to the Soviets. He did not want his propaganda ceremony overshadowed by news of the authentic surrender in Reims. Eisenhower's news blackout was intended to appease an increasingly truculent and distrustful ally. Documents in the National Archives bear this out. But the Atlantic article did not put Kennedy's career back on track. This former star of international journalism spent the rest of his life in small-town-newspaper exile, brooding and embittered. He died in Monterey, CA in 1963 after stepping from a bar into the path of an oncoming sedan.
The Pulitzer board has awarded special citations recognizing a journalists' body of work, not merely an article or series. The case for a Kennedy Pulitzer is stronger if one takes into account his entire career as a war correspondent, starting with the Spanish Civil War in 1937 and continuing through desperate battles in North Africa and Crete, the beachhead at Anzio, Italy, and the allied invasion of Southern France. Through it all, he butted heads continually with Army censors and PR officers who sought to keep journalists under tight control. In September 1944, Kennedy took a jeep and broke away from headquarters, driving from southern France toward Paris, eluding retreating German units, mapping areas that had fallen under control of the Resistance, and documenting a Nazi massacre of men, women, and children. He arrived in Paris only to have his credentials suspended for traveling without permission. Eric Sevareid, who covered the war for CBS, described Kennedy in his 1953 memoir as "one of the most rigidly honest, most unflaggingly objective journalists, who never ceased in his efforts to free the news . . . He did more to hold the military to the letter of the censorship rules . . . than any other journalist I know."
Dealing with Army PR was a Kafkaesque experience then, as it can be today. Eisenhower said in his farewell press conference for war correspondents in Europe that there had been no serious censorship of their copy. In that same press conference, he reminded them to clear any statement they wanted to quote with a PR officer. He also said he regarded journalists accredited to his command as "auxiliary staff officers" whose job was to support the war effort through "objective" reporting. In reality, of course, one can't be both a quasi-soldier and an independent reporter. Ed Kennedy chose to be the latter, and it very nearly destroyed him. Even 50 years after his death, awarding a prize to Kennedy might convey a useful message following the recent decade of war: We need more Ed Kennedys and fewer "auxiliary staff officers" in the press.