Benjamin C. Bradlee

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Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee
Born August 26, 1921 (1921-08-26) (age 86)
Boston, Massachusetts
Occupation newspaper editor

Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee (born August 26, 1921) is the vice president of The Washington Post. As executive editor of the Post from 1965 to 1991, he challenged the federal government over the right to publish the Pentagon papers. He became famous for overseeing the publication of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's stories documenting the Watergate scandal. For decades, Bradlee was one of only four publicly known people who knew the true identity of Deep Throat, the other three being Woodward, Bernstein, and Deep Throat himself. Bradlee presently resides at Grey Gardens, the former East Hampton estate of the Bouvier family.

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[edit] Early life

A member of the Boston Brahmin Crowninshield family, and a third cousin of Queen Victoria, he was born in Boston, Massachusetts and attended Dexter School. His father was Frederick Josiah Bradlee Jr., an All American football player at Harvard, and a descendant of John Bradley who was the first of the Bradleys to come to America (1630). Bradlee's maternal grandfather, Carl Augut deGersdorff, was a famed New York lawyer; his brother, Frederic Josiah Bradlee III, traced the deGersdorff ancestry back to Count and Margrave Gero I (c.900-965), also known as "The Great," who was a Margrave, or Prince, of the Holy Roman Empire. Bradlee attended Harvard College, where he majored in classical Greek, was a member of the AD Club, a prominent final club, and joined Naval ROTC. He graduated in 1942, and received his commission two hours after graduating. He spent four years on a destroyer in the South Pacific. He married Jean Saltonstall, and after graduating, joined the Office of Naval Intelligence and worked as a communications officer in the Pacific Theatre during World War II. The main ship on which Bradlee served was the USS Philip (DD-498). He fought off the shores of Guam and arrived at Guadalcanal with the Second Fleet; his main battles were Saipan, Tinian, and Bougainville. Bradlee's duties included handling classified and coded cables. After the war, in 1946, he became a reporter at the New Hampshire Sunday News, a venture he helped launch, then started working for the Washington Post in 1948 as a reporter. Bradlee also got to know Philip Graham, Eugene Meyer's son-in-law, and associate publisher of the newspaper. In 1951 Graham helped Bradlee become assistant press attaché in the American embassy in Paris.

[edit] Ancestry

Bradlee is a direct descendant of "Charles the Great" also known as Charlemagne, The Holy Roman Emperor[citation needed]. He is also a direct descendant of the Mayflower passenger William Brewster, and his 9th great grand uncle was George Soule, who also came over on the Mayflower in 1620[citation needed]. His great-great-grandfather was Ludwig von Tschirsky und Bogendorff who married Friedericka Theodora Elizabeth Trotta von Treyden who had a daughter named Augusta Theodora von Tschirsky und Bogendorff. Augusta's father was Ludwig von Tschirzky und Bogendorff, who married Friedericka Theodora Elizabeth Trotta von Treyden. Her father was Heinrich Trotta von Treyden who married Princes Johanna Dorothea von Reuss who's father was Count Heinrich XXIX von Reuss. Count Heinrich XXIX who was from the house of Reuss, Germany was the great, great, great grandfather of Queen Victoria. Bradlee's great-great-great-great-grandmother was Princes Johanna Dorothea of Reuss, Germany[citation needed]. (All of this information is from our family tree and the research that I have done at www.ancestry.com)

[edit] Government work

In 1952 Bradlee joined the staff of the Office of U.S. Information and Educational Exchange (USIE), the embassy's propaganda unit. USIE produced films, magazines, research, speeches, and news items for use by the CIA throughout Europe. USIE (later known as USIA) also controlled the Voice of America, a means of disseminating pro-American "cultural information" worldwide. While at the USIE, according to a Justice Department memo from an assistant U.S. attorney in the Rosenberg Trial, Bradlee was helping the CIA manage European propaganda regarding the spying conviction and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on June 19, 1953.

Bradlee was officially employed by USIE until 1953, when he began working for Newsweek. While based in France, Bradlee divorced his first wife and married Antoinette Pinchot. At the time of the marriage, Antoinette's sister, Mary Pinchot Meyer, was married to Cord Meyer, a key figure in Operation Mockingbird, a CIA program to influence the media.

Antoinette Bradlee was also a close friend of Cicely d'Autremont, who was married to James Jesus Angleton. Bradlee worked closely with Angleton in Paris. At the time, Angleton was liaison for all Allied intelligence in Europe. His deputy was Richard Ober, a fellow student of Bradlee at Harvard University.

In 1957, now working as a reporter for Newsweek, Bradlee created a great deal of controversy when he interviewed members of the FLN. They were Algerian guerrillas who were in rebellion against the French government at the time. According to Deborah Davis, author of Katharine the Great about Katharine Graham, this had all the "earmarks of an intelligence operation." As a result of these interviews, Bradlee was given an expulsion order from France; however, the order was suspended and finally repealed.

[edit] Medals

He is a winner of the French Legion of Honor.

[edit] Washington Post

As a reporter in the 1950s, Bradlee became close friends with Senator John F. Kennedy, who lived nearby. In 1960 he toured with both Richard Nixon and Jack Kennedy in their presidential campaigns. He served as a reporter in various assignments at the Post until becoming a senior editor in 1961. Bradlee maintained that position until being promoted to managing editor in 1965. He became vice president and executive editor in 1968 and married fellow reporter Sally Quinn in 1978. Bradlee retired as executive editor in September 1991 but continues to serve as vice president of the paper. Mr. Bradlee's long-time executive assistant at The Washington Post was Carol Leggitt.

Bradlee's leadership at The Washington Post was transformative not only for the newspaper but for the nation as well. In 1971 The New York Times and The Washington Post successfully challenged the government over the right to publish the Pentagon Papers. Only a year later, Bradlee backed reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein as they probed the break-in at the Democratic National Committee Headquarters in The Watergate. Ensuing investigations of suspected cover-ups led inexorably to Congressional committees, conflicting testimonies, and, ultimately, to the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974. He also appears as a character in the 1976 film about Woodward and Bernstein All the President's Men, where he is portrayed by Jason Robards, who won an Academy Award for his performance.

In 1981, Post reporter Janet Cooke won a Pulitzer Prize for "Jimmy's World", a profile of an eight-year-old heroin addict. Cooke's article turned out to be based on a fiction: there was no such addict. As executive editor, Bradlee was roundly criticized in many circles for failing to ensure the article's accuracy. After questions about the story's veracity arose, Bradlee (along with publisher Donald Graham) ordered a "full disclosure" investigation to ascertain the truth. At one point during the investigation, Bradlee angrily compared Cooke with Richard Nixon over her attempted coverup of the fake story. Bradlee personally apologized to Mayor Marion Barry and the chief of police of Washington, D.C., for the Post's fictitious article. Cooke, meanwhile, was forced to resign and relinquish the Pulitzer.

[edit] Recent Work

Today he continues to serve on The Washington Post's editorial board as vice president at large.

Bradlee published an autobiography in 1995, A Good Life: Newspapering and Other Adventures. He had an acting role in Born Yesterday, the 1993 remake of the 1950 romantic comedy.

On May 3, 2006, Bradlee received a Doctor of Humane Letters from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.. Prior to receiving the honorary degree, he taught occasional journalism courses at Georgetown.

In 1991 he was persuaded by then-Governor William Donald Schaefer to accept chairmanship of the Historic St. Mary's City Commission and continued in that position through 2003. He also served for 12 years as a member of the board of trustees at St. Mary's College of Maryland and honored the school by endowing the Benjamin C. Bradlee Annual Lecture in Journalism.

In the fall of 2005, Jim Lehrer conducted 3 two-hour interviews with Bradlee on a variety of topics from the responsibilities of the press to the differences between Watergate and the Valerie Plame case. The interviews were edited for an hour-long documentary called Free Speech: Jim Lehrer and Ben Bradlee, which premiered on PBS on June 19, 2006.

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