He was the guy who was always warning his reporters: hope to hell
Oct 22, 2014, 8:54 AM | Updated: 9:06 am
In this June 21, 1971 photo, Washington Post Executive Director Ben Bradlee and Post Publisher Katharine Graham leave U.S. District Court in Washington. Bradlee died Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2014, according to the Washington Post. (AP file photo)
(AP file photo)
Ben Bradlee, editor of the Washington Post during the Watergate years, died at the age of 93.
He oversaw the 400 stories the Post ran on Watergate, which finally led to Richard Nixon becoming the first U.S. President to resign his office. But in talking to journalism students on CSPAN four years ago, he wanted to make it clear that it was not a vendetta.
“In the first place, I think that if you wiped out Watergate, Nixon was a very good president. I didn’t dislike him at all.”
He even thought Nixon deserved his pardon.
“I think probably yes, although there will always be some of us who would have liked for it to have gone on a little longer.”
Absolutely, because he admits it was the most exciting period of his career. Scandals just don’t come better than that.
“Give me some way it could have been better? If you would have told any editor of the Washington Post since the beginning of time there was going to be a story that 40 people would go to jail and the President of the United States would resign, he’d say ‘thank you, Lord.'”
By the way, for those of you who don’t remember, the Washington Post was the only newspaper pursuing the story in the month leading up to the 1972 election and people ignored it. Nixon won 49 states.
But Bradlee never had any doubts.
“It sounds conceited I’m really not, but we knew we were right. We knew we were right.
The late Ben Bradlee.
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