The sad news that practically everyone in the world of American journalism had long been anticipating, finally came splashing across the Internet and multiple Twitter feeds Tuesday evening.
Benjamin C. Bradlee, former executive editor of the Washington Post, died at his Georgetown home Tuesday. He was 93.
Mr. Bradlee had been suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease, and since September, according to his wife, the writer Sally Quinn, he was barely eating, while sleeping most of the day, more than 20 hours.
Under Bradlee’s combative tough love leadership, the Post earned 18 Pulitzer Prizes, which spanned from 1968 through 1991, including the most celebrated expose of them all, a Pulitzer in the category of Public Service in 1973, when two of his young prized reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, uncovered a break-in at the Watergate complex in Washington D.C. during the hot summer months of 1972. Their investigation sparked a federal investigation, leading to 41 indictments, with 21 individuals sentenced to prison, while the 37th President of the United States, Richard M. Nixon, resigned in disgrace to become the first president in U.S. history forced from office.
During the height of the Watergate scandal, Bradlee reportedly strutted around the newsroom, belting out with great satisfaction: ``Eat your heart out Abe Rosenthal,’’ a biting reference to scooping The New York Times and Bradlee’s chief rival, executive editor A.M. Rosenthal.
Another momentous hallmark during Bradlee’s courageous stewardship of the newsroom was his indomitable reverence for the first amendment by deciding (along with Post publisher Katharine Graham) to publish the Pentagon Papers, which revealed that the U.S. government had secretly enlarged the scale of the Vietnam War with precision bombings in different regions in southeast Asia that went unreported by U.S. newspapers.
The Post (as well as The Times) had to defend their decision to publish the Papers in the U.S. Supreme Court, when the Nixon administration tried to smother any further top secret revelations from appearing in print. The Court upheld the Times and Post’s decision to publish the Papers in a landmark 6-3 decision on June 30th, 1971.
As might be imagined, the reaction and reflections on the loss of such an influential editor have been coming thick and fast.
Here are some that came back through my email inbox.
- ``Great man, great editor, great friend, great loss for all who knew him.''
-Carl Bernstein, former Washington Post investigative reporter and author.
- ``He defined journalism for three generations. He set the standard and always made it fun.''
-Tina Brown, award-winning journalist, editor, author and currently founder and CEO of Tina Brown Live Media.
- ``It seems a cliché to say that Ben was a giant, but so he was. He single-handedly, through guts and instinct and imagination -- as well as his trust in two young reporters -- took the mediocre also-ran paper (after the Star) in the nation's capital and turned it into the leader in American journalism, leaving even the Times in its dust. He learned from his mistakes -- his own protective coverage of JFK, for instance -- and pushed forward. He remains the yardstick against which all other editors are measured and nearly always found wanting.''
-Frank Rich, former New York Times op-ed columnist, and currently Writer-at-Large for New York magazine in which he writes monthly on politics and culture.
- ``There are and will be millions of stories about Ben Bradlee and the way he ran the Post. Here's just one of them, one that hasn't been told and one that, I think, illustrates the wonderful hands-on, freewheeling way he operated on matters big and small.
In 1972, I was covering the federal courthouse in DC, which at the time handled major criminal cases along with the standard federal litigation. The biggest murder case of the year involved a guy who had hired someone to murder his wife --and to do so in a way that made it look like a racial crime rather than a cop killing.
The day the case went to trial, the prosecutor and defense attorney reached agreement on a plea of second-degree murder. They took the plea to [Judge John] Sirica, who, in a bench conference, told them he wouldn't take the plea -- it was a first-degree murder case, he said, and he wouldn't reduce the charge. The prosecutors protested -- they didn't want a long trial and an uncertain outcome.
I was sitting in the first or second row, and what was supposed to be a secret bench conference was entirely audible. I thought we should do a story, and called it in to the Post. The editors agreed, but Bradlee quickly sent word that I should tell Sirica we were doing the story, so the judge could sequester the jury.
I went into Sirica's chambers to tell him. He was furious. He announced he would hold a hearing in 30 minutes on why reporter Mann and the Washington Post should not be held in contempt of court.
I gulped (not even having a toothbrush with me to take to jail) and called the Post again, to pass on Sirica's threat. This time, I was dealing directly with Ben on the phone. He listened, took it all in, told me not to worry and to keep on reporting. He would send "a lawyer" to the hearing.
Twenty-five minutes later, the Post "lawyer" walked into Sirica's chambers. It was none other than Edward Bennett Williams. (His firm had only months earlier been retained by The Post, because Kay Graham and Bradlee had been unhappy with the blue-blood law firm representing them on the Pentagon Papers.) I knew Williams' firm would now be involved -- but Williams himself? He was Bradlee's friend, and Bradlee sent him to protect me.
Williams handled the whole thing in about 15 minutes. "Hi John," he said to Sirica. "Hi Ed," said the judge. It turned out that they were old friends --had worked together, in fact, as lawyers at the Joe McCarthy hearings. (on McCarthy's side, as I recall). "You don't really want to hold The Post and this reporter in contempt," said Williams nicely, letting him know it would be a huge controversy if he did. "Could the jury be sequestered?" Sirica decided he could do that. The hearing ended, the jury was sequestered -- and, with Bradlee's considerable involvement, the story ran on the front page the next morning.
That was the climate of the Post at the time. Bradlee had a hand in the big stories, he pushed to get them, and he called out the best resources he could -- even on a local criminal case.
In all the years since, in all the stories I've done in the US or overseas, I was never represented by Edward Bennett Williams again. Only Bradlee could arrange that.''
-James Mann, former newspaper reporter, foreign correspondent and columnist who wrote for more than twenty years for the Los Angeles Times. Mann was additionally a former metro reporter for the Washingon Post ,where he worked on some of the early Watergate stories. He is now an author-in-residence at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies
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-Bill Lucey
October 22, 2014
