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October 22, 2014

Former Washington Post Editor Ben Bradlee Dies at 93 
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Former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee has died at the age of 93 of
natural causes. Bradlee served as executive editor of the Post from 1968
to 1991, presiding over its publication of the Pentagon Papers and its
coverage of the Watergate scandal, which forced President Richard Nixon
to resign. In 1971, Washington Post reporter Betty Medsger received
documents stolen by activists from an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania
— including one bearing the mysterious term "COINTELPRO," which
turned out to reveal the FBI's counter-intelligence program. Medsger
spoke on Democracy Now! about how Bradlee fought to publish the story,
even though the Post's publisher, Katherine Graham, initially had
qualms.

Betty Medsger: "It was the first time that she had been faced with a
demand from the Nixon administration that she suppress a story. And she
did not want to publish. And the in-house counsel, the lawyers, also did
not want to publish. But two editors, from the beginning, realized it
was a very important story and pushed it — Ben Bradlee and Ben
Bagdikian."

 

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