Legendary former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee, who oversaw the reporting that exposed the Watergate scandal and brought down President Richard Nixon, died Tuesday at the age of 93.
Here’s what you need to know.
1. Bradlee Was Suffering From Dementia & Had Been Receiving Hospice Care
Ben Bradlee signs a program at the First Amendment Awards dinner in 2002. (Getty)
The revelation that the 93-year-old Bradlee is nearing death came in a C-SPAN interview with Bradlee’s wife, 73-year-old author and journalist Sally Quinn. The interview was taped September 18 and published September 28. You can watch it at the top of this post.
He left his first wife and married Quinn — whom he hired as a reporter at the Post but who had since left to go to CBS — in 1978. The two have a son, Quinn Bradlee, who was born in 1982.
Quinn said Bradlee has been suffering from dementia for years and now sleeps 20 hours each day, though he knows who he is and who Quinn is.
From Quinn:
He does know who I am, yes. We actually have called in hospice care this week. It’s interesting because I thought “this is going to be not so hard, because Ben is going to be, he’ll just gradually lose his memory and he’ll ask me to repeat things, and it’ll just be …” But it’s been the most horrible experience I’v ever had up until recently. He’s still at home. And I still have him sleeping in the bed with me and I will until the end.
But a certain peace has come over me and this feeling of serenity because what I thought was going to be horrible — the caretaking part of it — has really become something almost sacred about it. That’s not drivel. I didn’t expect that. I just expected I would be having a nervous breakdown and it would be too horrible. But I don’t think we’ve ever been as loving with each other as we are now. We spend a lot of time together and we hold hands, and he knows me and he loves having me there. And it’s just extremely rewarding to be able to be there for him now to try to make him happy and to give him as much love as I can until he dies.
2. Bradlee Led the Coverage That Exposed the Watergate Scandal
Ben Bradlee with Carl Bernstein (left) and Bob Woodward, the reporters who exposed the Watergate Scandal, in 2005. (Getty)
Bradlee was editor of the Post in its glory days from 1968 to 1991, leading the paper’s publication of the Pentagon Papers and the reporting by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein that exposed the Watergate scandal and eventually toppled President Richard Nixon.
The late Jason Robards played Bradlee in the 1976 movie All the President’s Men, a hit based on a book with the same title written by Woodward and Bernstein.
Woodward and Bernstein, whose names became synonymous with investigative reporting, worked under Bradlee’s guidance to expose a widespread conspiracy among Nixon administration officials to cover up the 1972 burglary at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Building in Washington, D.C.
The reporting is widely pointed to as the high-point in American investigative journalism in the 20th century. It led directly to Nixon’s resignation in 1974, marking the only time an American president has resigned.
Here’s how the New York Times described the Post’s Watergate reporting in its obituary of Bradlee:
With the help of others on the staff and the support of Mr. Bradlee and his editors — and Mrs. Graham — they uncovered a political scandal involving secret funds, espionage, sabotage, dirty tricks and illegal wiretapping. Along the way they withstood repeated denials by the White House, threats from the attorney general (who ended up in prison) and the uncomfortable feeling of being alone on the story of the century.
3. Bradlee Was Awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013
President Obama presents Ben Bradlee with the Presidential Medial of Freedom on November 20, 2013. (Getty)
In 2013, President Barack Obama honored Bradlee with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Oprah, President Bill Clinton, late astronaut Sally Ride, women’s rights activist Gloria Steinem, Hall of Fame Chicago Cubs shortstop Ernie Banks, legendary North Carolina basketball coach Dean Smith and country singing legend Loretta Lynn were also among those honored.
Via Politico, here’s what Obama said about Bradlee in issuing the medal:
“A veteran of World War II and more than a dozen pacific battles, Ben Bradlee brought the same intensity and dedication to journalism. Since joining ‘The Washington Post’ 65 years ago, he transformed that newspaper into one of the finest in the world,” Obama said as a clearly moved Bradlee wiped away tears. “And with Ben in charge, the Post published the pentagon papers exposed Watergate, unleashed a new era of investigative journalism, holding America’s leaders accountable and reminding us that our freedom as a nation rests on our freedom of the press.
4. The Post Won 17 Pulitzer Prizes During the Bradlee Era
From the Post’s obituary:
During his tenure, a paper that had previously won just four Pulitzer Prizes, only one of which was for reporting, won 17 more, including the Public Service award for the Watergate coverage.
“Ben Bradlee was the best American newspaper editor of his time and had the greatest impact on his newspaper of any modern editor,” said Donald E. Graham, who succeeded his mother as publisher of The Post and Mr. Bradlee’s boss.
5. Bradlee Pushed for Publication of the Pentagon Papers & Won
Ben Bradlee at the 2001 funeral of former Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham, who was Bradlee’s boss. (Getty)
From the Post:
The most compelling story of Bradlee’s tenure, almost certainly the one of greatest consequence, was Watergate, a political scandal touched off by The Post’s reporting that ended in the only resignation of a president in U.S. history.
But Mr. Bradlee’s most important decision, made with Katharine Graham, The Post’s publisher, may have been to print stories based on the Pentagon Papers, a secret Pentagon history of the Vietnam War. The Nixon administration went to court to try to quash those stories, but the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the decision of the New York Times and The Post to publish them.
