60 Minutes' Ed Bradley Dead At 65

Veteran CBS News Correspondent Succumbs To Leukemia

(CBS)  Bradley's work on 60 Minutes gained him much recognition, including a George Foster Peabody Award for "Big Man, Big Voice," the uplifting story of a German singer who became successful despite birth defects. In 1995, he won his 11th Emmy for a 60 Minutes segment on the cruel effects of nuclear testing in the town of Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan - a report that also won him an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award in 1994.

In 1983, two of Bradley’s reports for 60 Minutes won Emmy Awards: "In the Belly of the Beast," an interview with Jack Henry Abbott, a convicted murderer and author, and "Lena," a profile of singer Lena Horne. He received an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton and a 1991 Emmy Award for his report "Made in China," a look at Chinese forced-labor camps, and another Emmy in 1992 for "Caitlin’s Story," an examination of the controversy between the parents of a deaf child and a deaf association.

In addition to "In the Killing Fields," his work for "CBS Reports" included: "Enter the Jury Room," an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award winner that revealed the jury deliberation process for the first time in front of network cameras. A series of stories from 1979 were award winners, including: "The Boat People," which won duPont, Emmy and Overseas Press Club Awards; "The Boston Goes to China," a report on the historic visit to China by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which won Emmy, Peabody and Ohio State Awards, and "Blacks in America: With All Deliberate Speed?," which won Emmy and duPont Awards.

Bradley's coverage of the plight of Cambodian refugees, broadcast on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite and CBS News Sunday Morning, won a George Polk Award in journalism.

He also received a duPont citation for a segment on the Cambodian situation broadcast on CBS News' "Magazine" series. He covered the presidential campaign of Jimmy Carter during 1976, served as a floor correspondent for CBS News' coverage of the Democratic and Republican National Conventions from 1976 through 1996, and has participated in CBS News' election-night coverage.

Prior to joining 60 Minutes, Bradley was a principal correspondent for "CBS Reports" from 1978 to 1981, after serving as CBS News' White House correspondent from 1976 to 1978. He was also anchor of the "CBS Sunday Night News” from 1976 to 1981 and of the CBS News magazine "Street Stories" from January 1992 to August 1993.

Bradley joined CBS News as a stringer in its Paris bureau in September 1971. A year later, he was transferred to the Saigon bureau, where he remained until he was assigned to CBS News' Washington bureau in June 1974. He was named a CBS News correspondent in April 1973 and, shortly thereafter, was wounded while on assignment in Cambodia. In March 1975, he volunteered to return to Indochina and covered the fall of Cambodia and Vietnam.

What was Bradley's secret to getting such renowned stories? CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer said it was all in his style.

"Ed knew everyone from Jimmy Carter to Jimmy Buffett. He made people comfortable. He wasn't the bulldog type reporter like Mike Wallace," Schieffer said. "He set people at ease and got them to talk. Sometimes that was in their interest and sometimes it wasn't. But he was like Columbo, who had that disarming style and the knack of getting that last answer out of someone."

60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft said: "I think the thing that made him terrific was his presence. There was a dignity about him... a perfect mix of style and substance."

Bradley is survived by his wife, Patricia Blanchet and Reba E. Gaston, his aunt, of Dayton Ohio.