94 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • APRIL 2019
REAR VIEW
BEN BRADLEE
DIGGING THROUGH DECAY
By ANNIE WILKINSON
America is ripping apart at the seams
under the weight of corruption. It
falls to the media to reveal the facts,
for the pen is mightier than the
cover-up.
Sound like the current state of our
nation? Actually, it happened 45
years ago, when one newsman captained
his ship through epic waves
of scandal. The helmsman was Benjamin
Crowninshield Bradlee, The
Washington Post executive editor
who authorized breaking the news
that broke the president: Richard M.
Nixon resigned in 1974.
The New York Times called Ben
Bradlee the “last of the lion-king
newspaper editors.” Just who was this
indefatigable leader? And what possessed
this history shaper who dined
with presidents and princesses, who
was awarded accolades and medals,
to buy a crumbling, flea-infested
Hamptons mansion?
OPENING THE WATERGATES
The Harvard University alumnus
was tough: As a youth, he successfully
battled polio, and as a reporter, he
dug deep for political dirt. Starting
out at the New Hampshire Sunday
News, he was hired by the American
embassy in Paris. In 1952 he joined
its propaganda unit, used by the CIA
in Europe. As a Newsweek reporter,
then Washington Bureau Chief, he
befriended his neighbor, then-U.S.
Sen. John F. Kennedy, and covered
the 1960 Kennedy/Nixon presidential
campaigns. Joining the Post in 1965
as managing editor, Bradlee was
promoted to executive editor in 1968.
In 1971, he wrestled with a whopper
of an article that would yield Pulitzer
Prizes: With publisher Katharine
Graham, he ran a piece on the Pentagon
Papers, an incriminating Defense
Department study of the U.S.-Vietnam
conflict. A federal judge had barred
The New York Times from running
the story but the Supreme Court
ruled the government could not restrict
newspapers from publishing a
story before it ran. In 1972, the Post
investigated a burglary attempt to
bug the Democratic National Headquarters
in the Watergate complex,
leading to Nixon’s resignation.
The Times dubbed Bradlee “the Watergate
Warrior.” As Martha Sheyrill
wrote in The Washington Post,
“Nothing pleased Bradlee more than a
piece that nailed the corrupt, pricked
a narcissist, uncovered a creep, exposed
a phony, felled a climber, and
really told it like it was.”
ARCHEOLOGICAL
ADVENTURES
In 1978, the order-shouting, profanity
loving newsroom hero married
journalist Sally Quinn. The power
couple entertained an “eclectic mix of
media, celebrity and political types,”
wrote Washington Life, at their D.C.
and Maryland homes.
During those investigative reporting
glory days, Republicans and Democrats
behaved less acrimoniously.
“You could differ politically during
the day but at night you could sit
around the table, break bread, have
a few drinks, and there was a camaraderie
— and a lot of that happened
at Ben and Sally's table," wrote Harry
Jaffe, senior writer at Washingtonian
magazine, in a USA Today article.
Bradlee also supported historical
and archeological research. In 1979
he and his wife rescued an 14-room,
gray-shingled, 1897 mansion surrounded
by East Hampton’s soft
dunes and sea mists.
As The New York Times tells it, Bradlee
took one look and told Quinn she was
out of her mind. He reportedly wrote,
“In all my life, including years reporting
about slums from Washington to
Casablanca, I have never seen a house
in such dreadful condition: attics
full of raccoons and their droppings,
toilets stopped up, a kitchen stove that
had fallen into the cellar…”
Ever the clever phrase-turner, he
said, “There were 52 dead cats in it,
and funeral arrangements had to be
made for each one.”
The home had inspired Grey Gardens,
a 1975 documentary about
mother-daughter hoarder-owners
who lived in squalor, surrounded
by garbage and wild animals. Sally
Quinn told Architectural Digest, “The
floor was part dirt. The ceiling was
caving in … Still, I thought it was the
prettiest house I had ever seen.”
The power duo poured money into
restoration. Their “archeological
expedition,” as Quinn described it,
restored the home’s former glory,
and in old Hamptons style they entertained
local luminaries — Nora
Ephron, Paul McCartney, Steven
Spielberg — and hosted philanthropic
and arts organizations benefits.
In 2014, five years after being diagnosed
with dementia, Bradlee
entered hospice care. He had retired
as the Post’s executive editor in
1991 but served as vice president at
large until dying of natural causes
in Washington at age 93 in 2014.
Several years before, Quinn interviewed
him, asking how he wanted
to be remembered.
He replied, “To leave a legacy of honesty,
and I guess to live a life as close
to the truth as I can.”
Ben Bradlee receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from
President Barack Obama in 2013. Official White House photo
“Nothing pleased Bradlee more than a piece
that nailed the corrupt, pricked a narcissist,
uncovered a creep, exposed a phony, felled a
climber, and really told it like it was,” Martha
Sheyrill wrote in The Washington Post.
/LONGISLANDPRESS.COM
