an unsuccessful attempt to match the popular NBC Chet Huntley–David Brinkley anchor team. Mudd covered the 1968 Presidential campaign of United States Senator Robert F. Kennedy and interviewed him at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles only minutes before Kennedy was assassinated on June 5, 1968. Mudd hosted the seminal documentary The Selling of the Pentagon in 1971. He won Emmys for covering the shooting of Gov. George Wallace of Alabama in 1972 and the resignation of Vice President Spiro T. Agnew in 1973, and two more for CBS specials on the Watergate scandal. In 1981, he was a candidate to succeed Walter Cronkite as anchor of the CBS Evening News. Despite substantial support for Mudd within the ranks of CBS News and an offer to co-host with Dan Rather, network management gave the position to Rather after the longtime White House and 60 Minutes correspondent threatened to leave the network for ABC News. Ted Kennedy interview Mudd is best known for an interview with Senator Ted Kennedy broadcast on November 4, 1979. The CBS Reports special Teddy, appeared three days before Kennedy announced his challenge to President Jimmy Carter for the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination. In addition to questioning Kennedy about the Chappaquiddick incident, Mudd asked, "Senator, why do you want to be President?" Kennedy's stammering answer, which has been described as "incoherent and repetitive" and "vague, unprepared", while the senator "twitched and squirmed" for an hour, raised serious questions about his motivation in seeking the office, and marked the beginning of the sharp decline in Kennedy's poll numbers. Carter defeated Kennedy for the nomination for a second presidential term. Although the Kennedy family refused to permit any further interviews by Mudd, the interview helped strengthen Mudd's reputation as a leading political journalist. Mudd won a Peabody Award for the interview. Broadcaster and blogger Hugh Hewitt and Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson have used the term "Roger Mudd moment" to describe a self-inflicted disastrous encounter with the press by a presidential candidate. NBC News In 1980, Mudd and Dan Rather were in contention to succeed Walter Cronkite as the weeknight anchor of the CBS Evening News. After CBS awarded the job to Rather, Mudd chose to leave CBS News and he accepted an offer to join NBC News. He co-anchored the NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw from April 1982 until September 1983, when Brokaw took over as sole