Black Habits - News veteran Ed Bradley dead at 65

NEW YORK, Nov 9 (Reuters) - Pioneering black American journalist Ed Bradley, who won acclaim as a Vietnam War correspondent and later as a reporter for CBS' "60 Minutes," died on Thursday of complications from leukemia. He was 65.

Bradley, whose illness was not widely known, had just begun his 26th year as one of the team of reporters featured on the landmark CBS News magazine when he died at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, a network spokeswoman said.

In his last two broadcasts, both aired on "60 Minutes" in October, Bradley scored an exclusive interview with three Duke University lacrosse players accused of raping an exotic dancer, and presented an expose of safety failures at a BP refinery where 15 oil workers died in a 2005 explosion.

"It was a terrible blow. I had no idea that he was that seriously ill. I have lost, as have so many, many people, a real close friend and one that I admired so greatly," former CBS News anchor and industry legend Walter Cronkite told CNN.

Bradley's death was announced on the air by CBS News anchor Katie Couric, who broke into regular programming to deliver the news.

"With the passing of Ed Bradley we have lost one of America's best," longtime colleague Dan Rather, who left CBS (CBSa.N: Quote, Profile, Research) earlier this year, said in a statement. "As a lover of life and a great professional, he was an example of all a conscientious and dedicated journalist can be," Rather said.

Among the first black Americans to become a household name in U.S. network television news, Bradley's work earned 19 Emmy Awards, his latest for a piece about the reopening of the murder investigation into the 1955 racial murder of Emmett Till, a black youth in Mississippi.