Veteran's Benefit
Grad project captures soldiers' plight

Military journalist Kelly Kennedy negotiates with security personnel at the entrance to a special-operations forces conference in Amman, Jordan, in March 2006. “We had to line our bags up on the street and let this cute little labrador puppy sniff them,” she said. “He got to mine and sat down – the universal signal for ‘this girl's trouble.’ I spent the next two hours arguing with Jordanian soldiers.” (Photo/Alan Lessig, Defense News)

By Yu Miao

A series of investigative reports put the name “Walter Reed” in the public spotlight in February and March. Most focused on the shabby conditions veterans were enduring at the Army’s top medical facility. But months before that, reporter Kelly Kennedy (MA ’07), herself a Gulf War vet, had seen a much bigger issue.

As a graduate student last summer working on the professional project required for her master’s degree, Kennedy began compiling information about inadequate medical treatment for wounded soldiers. In November 2005, while still working on the project, she moved to Virginia to become a staff writer for the Army Times weekly newspaper.

The resulting story, “Wounded and Waiting,” was published by the Army Times on Feb. 20. It is an in-depth report on the slow medical evaluation process, which has left many injured troops in administrative limbo at Walter Reed.

It was on the leading edge of reporting done by major U.S. news media on the Walter Reed scandal, including The Washington Post, National Public Radio and national TV networks, and led to congressional committee hearings, government investigations and resignations and dismissals of high-ranking military officials – including the Army’s surgeon general, the head of Walter Reed Army Medical Center and even the secretary of the Army.

Soon afterwards, President Bush visited Walter Reed in March and apologized for the “disturbing” conditions at the Army hospital.

What set Kennedy’s work apart from those others, according to Kennedy’s graduate project supervisor, Associate Professor Len Ackland, is that her story “peels out the bureaucratic jargon and finds out how the system is not working.”

Kennedy’s reporting immediately caught the attention of national news organizations such as C-SPAN and NPR, which asked her to appear as a guest. On MSNBC’s Feb. 28 “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” (a transcript is at www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17404749/), on which she was invited to talk about apparent Army reprisals against vets who’d spoken out about Walter Reed shortcomings, Olbermann introduced her by saying:

“All of these developments (are) being reported today, not by one of the news outlets that reported the Washington situation last week, but by the Military Times newspaper chain.

“Let’s bring in the reporter responsible for that, Military Times staff writer Kelly Kennedy, an Army vet herself, who’s been chronicling vet treatment at Walter Reed for the last several months and doing a terrific job in doing so.”

As a veteran, Kennedy said, she has always been interested in writing stories on the military and veterans.

She said she originally planned to focus her project on women in the military but that one day a phone call changed her plan and the course of her career.

ByLines contacted Kennedy by e-mail and asked her how the story came together.

"I went to CU in part because of Len Ackland. I liked his background as a war correspondent and as an investigative reporter. I loved how hard he was on me, and that helped with this story." – Kelly Kennedy

How did you come up with the idea of writing investigative reports on Walter Reed and soldiers’ health-related stories?
I originally started working on the Walter Reed stories after a lieutenant colonel in the Army called and said he had something to show me. He had hundreds of pages of documentation showing that soldiers were not being treated the same when they went before the disability retirement board. At that point, I didn’t even know about Walter Reed. I was just interviewing soldiers about it. I had no idea the The Washington Post was there, too. Oddly, though, the Post reporters said they didn’t tell anyone they were there because they feared they would not get the story. To be fair, the public affairs officials at Walter Reed were with me all the time and never stopped soldiers from telling me the bad stories. And someone at Walter Reed gave me permission to hang out at Building 18. There was never a problem getting access. Now, of course, is a different story.

How did you start working for the Army Times?
I started working at Army Times after doing an internship at the Chicago Tribune. I’d worked at The Salt Lake Tribune and The Oregonian as a reporter before working on my master’s at CU, and I loved working for city papers. But I had always wanted to cover the military. When I found out Army Times is a civilian paper – owned by Gannett – it sounded like a good fit.

How many stories have you written for the paper so far? What are some of the most circulated ones?
I write two or three stories a week for Army Times, and I’ve been working there for about a year and a half.

The Walter Reed stories are by far the most circulated stories – especially after I talked about them on Keith Olbermann, C-SPAN and a couple of BBC shows. I wrote another piece about how basic training has changed. It highlights how drill sergeants are more interested in teaching soldiers than yelling at them, and that was well-circulated – especially by Marines.

The Washington Post published a story on the same topic as story “The Waiting Wounded,” yet it’s much more widely circulated. How do you feel about that?
It is frustrating to write about something so important and not have anyone notice. My first story about the system appeared last June, and there was a piece by (local newspaper reporter) Kevin Maurer from Fayetteville, N.C., last year, as well as a story in Slate. But until The Washington Post’s story, no one paid attention. If the combination of reports gets things fixed, that’s all that matters. It’s been cool to be part of it.

Tell us something about living in D.C. and working as journalist for the Army Times. What is your day-to-day work like?
D.C. has been a big change from the West and Chicago. In some ways, it’s really fun to write about something and then go to a hearing at the Hill the next week and have them talk about what I wrote about. It just feels like people are paying attention. And it’s fun to watch the process at this level.

Army Times is interesting because – like any other newspaper job – you don’t know what the day will be like. Someone will call and say, “Hey. We’re doing a training exercise in West Virginia and we have an extra spot in the Black Hawk. Want to come?” I’ve gotten to cover a special forces conference in Jordan, the Abu Ghraib trials and the new counterinsurgency manual. I just love that stuff.

What made you decide to join the military? How has that decision influenced your life and career choice?
I joined the military because I was a first-generation college student, and I needed to figure out a way to pay for it. I was a communication specialist in the U.S. Army, and served in the Persian Gulf War and in Mogadishu, Somalia. That absolutely affected my world. It made me much more curious about the decisions our politicians make and about the history behind conflicts. But it also was a great lesson in just how important it is to help people understand complicated situations.

How did you start at the journalism school at CU? How is your professional project coming along?
I was in the advanced professional program at CU, which I don’t think exists any more. It was for students who had at least three years’ newspaper experience. I spent a lot of time in military history and policy classes. I have defended my thesis, but, yes, I need to do some finishing up. Now that things have slowed down a bit on Walter Reed, I should have some weekend hours free to do that.

Which professor and courses did you learn most from?
I went to CU in part because of Len Ackland. I liked his background as a war correspondent and as an investigative reporter. I loved how hard he was on me, and that helped with this story.
Precision Journalism definitely helped with a piece I did that showed airmen and sailors receive significantly higher disability retirement payments than soldiers and Marines.

Any advice for SJMC graduate students?
Don’t blow off your thesis. Pick the hardest, most compelling story you can and work your ass off.

To read Kennedy’s stories or to e-mail her, go to kellykennedy.net.