Ben Bradlee, legendary 'Washington Post' editor, dies
Ben Bradlee, the former executive editor of The Washington Post who led the newspaper's Watergate coverage that brought down the Nixon administration, died Tuesday after years of battle with Alzheimer's disease. He was 93.
His death was announced by the Post.
Sally Quinn, his wife of 36 years, told C-SPAN in a September interview that Bradlee had been in hospice care.
President Obama praised Bradlee for helping Americans better understand the world they live in through his journalism.
"The standard he set -- a standard for honest, objective, meticulous reporting -- encouraged so many others to enter the profession,'' Obama said in a statement.
From his close association with the Graham family that owned the Post until 2013 to his personal friendship with President John F. Kennedy, Bradlee was a member of the media elite who operated in the upper echelons of D.C. high society.
But he was also a deadline-driven, exclusive-hungry newspaperman at his core, having paid his dues as a cub reporter, foreign correspondent, general assignment reporter on Capitol Hill and newspaper editor following his service in the Navy in World War II.
The apex of his career — best summarized in a photo of him staring down reflectively at the Post's "Nixon Resigns" headline in the first edition still in the composing room — was his oversight of the paper's dogged coverage of Richard Nixon and the president's men who sought an inside track to re-election by breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate hotel.
Bradlee's leadership helped unleash the ambitions and talents of two reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who uncovered the Watergate scandal and inspired a generation of journalism students wanting to follow in their footsteps.
Larry Kramer, publisher of USA TODAY and a former Post editor, called Bradlee "the greatest newspaper editor in history."
"Ben Bradlee was the most charismatic boss I have ever worked for or, for that matter, ever seen,'' Kramer said. "He was a wonderful person and an inspirational leader. His guidance was so powerful because it was so simple. He was obsessed with being first and best on every story, and wasn't satisfied unless that was true of every story in the paper.''
"But his true magic was as a leader,'' Kramer said. "Leading came so natural to him that if you worked for him you barely realized you had become unflinchingly loyal to him. His advice was so grounded in just doing the right thing that sometimes you didn't even realize he had given you advice and you were following it.''
Bradlee was one of only four individuals who knew the identity of Deep Throat, a key source in the Watergate story, until Deep Throat himself, former FBI associate director Mark Felt, revealed his identity in 2005.
The paper's Watergate coverage resulted in the Pulitzer Prize in 1973, stamping its arrival as an institution of national power and influence to rival The New York Times and laying the foundation for its culture of high-impact journalism.
Bradlee's in-the-background support of the reporters and their youthful eagerness and fear of him were vividly portrayed in the movie All the President's Men. The late Jason Robards' portrayal of the gravel-voiced, slightly hunched Bradlee won the actor an Oscar for best supporting actor. For Bradlee, it meant instant pop-culture fame, a lifetime cocktail party conversation topic — not that he lacked for one — and another layer to his growing mystique.
Described by colleagues as passionate, blustery, confident and playful, Bradlee roamed the newsroom to gossip with and recognize reporters for their work in his frequent but brief stops at cubicles. He was "the picture of mental health," wrote former Washington Post reporter and current New Yorker Editor David Remnick, in a profile of Bradlee in 1995 in The New Yorker.
"I looked at him with the awe of a kid gazing at the blue whale at the American Museum of Natural History," Remnick wrote. "He was always moving, working the room. If he stopped to talk to you, you were golden; if not, you were meat."
PERIPATETIC YEARS
After graduating from Harvard in 1942, Bradlee received his naval commission and worked in communications at the Office of Naval Intelligence in the Pacific during World War II.
After the war in 1946, Bradlee helped start a weekly newspaper, New Hampshire Sunday News, where he also worked as a reporter and an editor.
Eager to hit the big city, Bradlee called on family friends in 1948 to line up job interviews at The (Baltimore) Sun and the Post. With the rain darkening Baltimore as the train pulled up, he made a capricious and fateful decision to skip the Sun interview and remained in his seat. He was hired by the Post for $80 a week. He later landed a job as press attache at the U.S. Embassy in France in 1951.
The job, which included handling a good chunk of U.S. propaganda in Europe, lasted until 1954, but he remained in Europe a few more years as he transitioned to the role of European correspondent for Newsweek.
While stationed in Europe, the married Bradlee fell in love with Antoinette "Tony" Pinchot, who was visiting France with her sister. They left their spouses in 1954 and were married in 1956.
Believing that D.C. work experience would aid in his rise at the magazine, he sought a transfer to the D.C. bureau in 1957. Although he initially clashed with uncooperative and envious colleagues and dealt with assignments no one wanted, Bradlee rose through the ranks and became its D.C. bureau chief, Bradlee wrote in his 1995 memoirs, A Good Life.
While at Newsweek in D.C., Bradlee became friends with a neighbor, then-senator Kennedy. And the two couples — similar in ages and sharing the experiences of parenting toddlers — had shared dinners and getaways. The friendship lasted throughout Kennedy's short presidency and led to small scoops for Bradlee.
Tired of rumors that Newsweek was for sale, Bradlee swallowed a few drinks and called Post publisher Phil Graham one night at 11 p.m. to urge that the Post buy the magazine. Graham immediately invited Bradlee to come over to his Georgetown house. They spoke until 5 a.m., gossiping about the magazine's reporters, editors and ad salespeople.
"It was the best telephone call I ever made — the luckiest, most productive, most exciting, most rewarding, totally rewarding," Bradlee wrote in A Good Life.
In 1961, the Post bought a controlling stake in Newsweek from the Vincent Astor Foundation for $8 million.
Meanwhile, Graham, who had battled depression for years, committed suicide in 1963, and the control of the Post had transferred to his insecure but steely wife, Katharine "Kay" Graham.
Intrigued by Bradlee's refusal to accept promotions, Kay Graham invited Bradlee to lunch one afternoon in 1965 and asked him about his interest in joining the Post. In a reply that has since become oft-repeated in newsrooms and journalism schools, Bradlee replied: "If (managing editor) Al Friendly's job ever opened up, I'd give my left one for it."
"I have wondered since if I really would have parted with my left one to be managing editor of The Washington Post," Bradlee wrote in A Good Life. "Attached as I'm to it — and it to me — probably not."
BOOMING YEARS FOR 'WASHINGTON POST'
Bradlee signed on at the paper in 1965, claiming the title of deputy managing editor working under editor Russ Wiggins. But it didn't take the politically savvy newspaperman long before he assumed control.
After Wiggins retired in 1968, Bradlee became the newsroom's top honcho and entered a golden period — both for him and the newspaper — of financial success and professional competitiveness.
Bradlee's stellar rise in journalism was in part a result of good timing and blessed birth. But his allergy to authority, assertiveness bordering on recklessness and nose for news set the tone in the Post's newsroom as it sought to shake its reputation as an also-ran in the city.
Its newsroom budget totaled only about $4 million vs. $20 million at TheNew York Times. The Times had a dozen foreign bureaus, whereas the Post had one correspondent abroad in Europe.
But the paper compensated for its lack of resources with a certain scrappiness. With the blessing of Bradlee's boss, Kay Graham, Bradlee chose to run stories based on the Pentagon Papers, a classified document that outlined the U.S. handling of the Vietnam War.
The decision was made despite the fact that The New York Times, which received a copy a few days earlier and ran stories earlier, was enjoined from publishing more about the documents.
But the papers' fight to press ahead despite heavy objections and legal challenges from the Nixon administration steered the public spotlight back to the necessity of a cantankerous press — an adjective used by U.S. District Court judge Murray Gurfein in ruling in favor of the papers — in maintaining freedom of expression and the right of the people to know. That the Post was competing with the Times for an important story also showed that it was no longer a lightweight.
The crowning achievement of the paper and Bradlee would come a year later, after five men were arrested for breaking and entering into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at Watergate on June 17, 1972.
While he offered plenty of support, Bradlee's real contribution came in the hunger for news and the desire to provoke authorities that he fanned in the newsroom.
"He trusted reporters and editors. He really instilled that trust in you," said Len Downie, who succeeded Bradlee as the paper's executive editor and ran the newsroom until 2008. "He had this charismatic leadership that made you want to follow him."
He loved scoops and stories that resulted in resignations, but hated "process stories" all too common in D.C., Remnick said. He was, by self-proclamation, neither profound nor radical.
"I think his influence in the news industry was in the number of innovations he introduced" at the Post, Downie said. "He was really good at hiring talent and giving them a lot of leeway."
His recruiting pitches engendered a newsroom full of stellar talent that would go on to become well-known journalists, including Ward Just, David Broder, Don Oberdorfer, Richard Harwood and Stanley Karnow.
In 1980, Post reporter Janet Cooke's story Jimmy's World chronicled the harrowing life of an 8-year-old heroin addict. The Post won a Pulitzer Prize for it. But with doubts about the boy's existence surfacing in the newsroom, Bradlee began questioning Cooke about the boy's whereabouts and identity. Cooke eventually admitted that the story had been fabricated, resulting in the return of the Pulitzer and a painful chapter of institutional shame.
Bradlee ordered an internal investigation and endured a wave of schadenfreude emanating from peers who had marveled at his devil-may-care approach to work. But he recovered, and so did the Post.
"Of all Bradlee's enduring contributions, perhaps the greatest was that he had finally made the Post strong enough to endure a crisis as painful as the Janet Cooke affair," Remnick wrote.
BOSTON AND HARVARD
Born on Aug. 26, 1921 in Boston, Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee grew up in a "proper enough" but "not that rich" household that had been established in the region, Bradlee noted in his memoirs. The Bradlees "had been around for close to 300 years, but well down the totem pole from the Lowells and the Cabots," he wrote.
His father, Frederick Josiah Bradlee Jr., whose family goes back to the colony of Massachusetts in 1631, was an All-American football player from Harvard who went into investment banking in the 1920s but lost his fortune in the Depression.
Josephine de Gersdorff, who Bradlee says was "fancier" than his father, grew up in a lawyer's family, speaking German and French. Jo, as she preferred to be known, was a co-holder of the high-jump record at her prep school and was "lovely to look at, well read, ambitious and flirtatious."
Amid the talk of Hitler and communism, Bradlee applied to Harvard and got in, though there was little doubt that the legacy admission process would work in his favor. A total 51 family members had gone to Harvard, including his father and his grandfather.
But with his interest far-ranging — he lettered in football, hockey, baseball and tennis and was in the glee club at St. Mark's School — he made it to the college of his choice with honors in English, French and Greek.
While he dabbled in baseball and squash at Harvard, he sought other diversions — and was introduced to journalism — at The Crimson, the school newspaper whose building was "wonderfully messy, hectic and full of ink smells," Bradlee wrote.