Watergate editor: It takes courage

Former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee addresses the New Zealand Herald newsroom.

The mighty legend of world newspapers perches on the edge of the desk, swinging a beige suede shoe, enjoying himself. Occasionally, to make a point and to get the journalists fired up, he punches his fist into the air, raises his throaty voice to a thunderous growl, throws in the odd "goddamn". Mostly, he simply answers the questions.

This is Ben Bradlee, editor of the Washington Post during the Watergate scandal of 1972-1974. Watergate spawned thousands of column inches in newspapers, dozens of television interviews, hundreds of dinner party conversations, a movie - and the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

It was Bradlee who gave two young reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, enough time, resources and freedom to do the job. He backed them to a level that surprises even him today. And in so doing he not only helped uncover a political scandal of huge historical importance - but inspired journalists for generations.
Bradlee was always an involved editor. "One great essential in a newspaper is energy, at all levels," he says. "Editors inspire it. I made a tour of the newsroom floor twice a day. And if I saw two or more talking together I'd go up.

"You've got to know what they're talking about. There has to be that essence of excitement in a newsroom.

"Journalists really have to care about what's going on - and the truth about what's going on," he continues. "You've got to be interested why things are happening and why things aren't happening. You've gotta have curiosity, energy, legs, want to work hard." And, as he said earlier, with one of those punches in the air, "you've gotta have courage!"

Bradlee is still active with a role in the 17-strong Independent News and Media International Advisory Board which started when Sir Anthony O'Reilly bought a newspaper group in South Africa. "He was worried about how a new, white owner would be welcomed by the new, black Mandela government." Bradlee's job and that of the advisory board was to emphasise to Nelson Mandela and colleagues the virtues of a free and independent press.

"And it was largely accepted," says Bradlee. "They're very bright people."

Today the INM Advisory Board has three black members from South Africa who, says Bradlee, are "fantastically intelligent" and "his mission is largely accomplished". 

Now 84, Bradlee still has the energy to light up a newsroom. He laughs often, listens carefully, and answers every question, no matter how personal. He works a full day at the Post, where he has an office and "a pretty good idea what's going on". Despite once being described as "a stop on the tour of the Washington Post", he meets and inspires new reporters.

And when necessary, he can still take the helm. When the first xeroxed copies of this year's Vanity Fair article revealing the name of Deep Throat, the anonymous source who tipped off Woodward and Bernstein during the Watergate affair, spilled out of the Washington Post fax, the paper's editor and deputy were out of the office.

"So," says Bradlee, "I worked on it."

First he got hold of Woodward, who was also incredulous at former FBI official Mark Felt revealing himself as the source. "Woodward can be impossibly moralistic," says Bradlee. "He said 'I gave my word to Mark Felt that I would never reveal his name and I've never been told that I'm released from that'.

"I said, 'Oh, For God's sake! He's talked to the reporter who wrote this story, so has his daughter'."

Woodward finally agreed.

Although Woodward and Bernstein had used Felt for much of their information, Bradlee knew little about him. "I knew he was high up in the Justice Department," he says. "And every time he was the source for a story it turned out."

It was only after Nixon had resigned, and other newspapers questioned Deep Throat's existence, that Bradlee insisted on knowing his identity. "Woodward and I went to a park, sat on a bench. It was all over in five minutes."

Now, like Woodward, he was "totally surprised" that Felt had come out in the open.

"Why do you think he did it?"

"I don't think he did, I think the daughter did it."

He looks at me with those candid eyes that have spent over 60 years ferreting out the truth: "I don't like to emphasise this, but he's not in great shape," he says without malice.

"You mean mentally?"

"Yeah."

"Did she [the daughter] get paid?"

" I don't know the answer to that. I would bet that she did, and she'll get some hunk of the book. The word is that the guy got US$10,000 [$15,000] for writing the story - and that is what produced the subsequent offer for the book."

Today Woodward is a public figure in America, with unprecedented access to the White House, and private, face-to-face, interviews with the President.

It is a long time since he came looking for a job at the Post and Bradlee had no room for him. "I said 'go get a job and come back in a year'," he says. "He did and I noticed him getting stories in that paper that we should've had. So when he came back and said, "Here I am, I'm ready' we took him."

Now, says Bradlee, "He's also fortunately very teasable ... it prevents him from getting a swelled head."

If Woodward was going to get big-headed it might have happened after the release of the Watergate movie, All the President's Men, starring Robert Redford as Woodward and Dustin Hoffman as Bernstein. As Bradlee says, "It was a pretty good movie except for the phones. When you called anyone, they were there.

"Hoffman spent weeks in the office, so long he almost blended into the walls. And after a while he got so good he could call Woodward [as Bernstein] and even he wouldn't know it was Dustin."

Bradlee has pretty good contacts too. There were 75 high-powered guests at his 83rd birthday party, including Barbara Walters, John McCain, Lauren Bacall, Tom Brokaw and Newsweek's Lally Weymouth, who apparently left early because she was not seated next to Bradlee.

For years Bradlee and his second wife, Tony, lived in the same area in Georgetown, Washington, as John and Jackie Kennedy. The couples met on a warm Sunday in 1959, pushing their babies in their prams, moved on to drinks, dinners, golf, weekends at Hyannisport. There's a photo in Bradlee's autobiography, A Good Life: Newspapering and Other Adventures of the two young couples on a couch, a rakish, darkly handsome Bradlee with his arm around Jackie Kennedy.

For a time Bradlee, then writing for Newsweek, became one of Kennedy's most trusted journalists. To the frustration of his rivals, it was Bradlee who regularly climbed out of Kennedy's converted Convair plane, Caroline. And despite a falling out during the run up, the Bradlees were there for supper, the night Kennedy won the election.

They were also there, tragically, when Jackie wandered the corridors of Bethesda Naval Hospital in her pink suit stained with her husband's blood. Wrote Bradlee: "She fell into our arms, in silence. Then asked us if we wanted to hear what happened."

Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee was born in 1921 in Boston and started his career as a journalist in his early 20s when he helped found the New Hampshire Sunday News, working under probably the greatest influence of his career, editor Ralph M. Blagden. Blagden had suffered a nervous breakdown, was a sometime Christian Scientist and a chain smoker, but he taught Bradlee how to investigate ("Follow the money"). As he says, "he had such a lively mind, interested in anything. My God, he was good - one of the best. And he could throw a stone further than any man I ever met!"

By then Bradlee was married to Jean Saltonstall, who he had wed at 20. They had one son, Ben Bradlee Jnr, born in 1948, and divorced after 13 years. The New Hampshire Sunday News on the other hand, only lasted 25 months during which circulation soared, but advertising, scared off by a feisty editorial stance, dwindled.

Next came his first stint as a reporter at the Post, marriage to Antoinette Pinchot, and the births of "Dino" and Marina. These were the years of Bradlee's career in Paris, first as a press attache with the American Embassy, then as a reporter for Newsweek. He rejoined the Washington Post as managing editor in 1965 and married, for the third time, to journalist Sally Quinn, in 1978. They have one son, Quinn.

The other important woman in Bradlee's life was Katharine Graham, then publisher of the Washington Post who persuaded Bradlee to quit Newsweek and join the Post.

What makes a great editor? "A great owner!" he fires back now. An editor "can't do beans" without someone supporting him financially and emotionally. And Katharine Graham was the best. She was involved without being interfering. She also had a wide circle of influential friends and contacts. "She was the leader of the best social scene ... she had a great big house and it was really good fun to go there.

"She had a pal in [Henry] Kissinger who none of us really liked. We thought he was devious."

" I gave her an early test," he continues. The ad department had given Graham a picture of some grocery store owners, which she passed on to Bradlee saying, "they asked me to give it to you." Bradlee, who knew he could "bury it somewhere", took it and promptly forgot all about it.

"Next day when I saw her she said 'Thanks a lot"', he recalls. "I didn't wilfully not run it, I just didn't." Problem over.

His editorial independence was assured. "Katharine Graham never asked me to take anything out," he says. "We'd have lunch and she'd ask, 'Are you sure you're right?' It was a perfectly good question."

And, of course, Bradlee always was right. As he points out with pride, over the entire 400 stories the Washington Post published during Watergate, they made one "minor" mistake.