Ben Bradlee

Fifty years ago this week a group of burglars broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in Washington, DC.

They were sent there by – and paid by – operatives working to re-elect President Richard M. Nixon.

Those DNC offices were located in a Washington complex called The Watergate, where a security guard. found the burglars and caught them.

And the whole thing might have been successfully covered up, if not for the relentless pursuit of the story but two young Washington Post reporters, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward.

Backed by their editor Ben Bradlee, and the paper’s publisher, Katharine Graham, Woodward and Bernstein eventually unraveled the scandal now known simply as Watergate.

It was a time that changed American politics, and American journalism, permanently.

Each of the interviews will be featuring this week on Now. I’ve Heard Everything is centered on one figure from the Watergate scandal.

On Wednesday, my conversations with the former Nixon White House counsel John Dean, who was a central figure in the conspiracy and cover-up.

And then on Friday, the man often called the mastermind of the DNC break-in, former FBI agent and Nixon operative G. Gordon Liddy.

But first, in today’s episode, the iconic and renowned Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee. He took over at the Post in 1965, in the thick of Vietnam, the civil Rights movement and a changing journalism landscape.

And although Watergate may be the thing he is best remembered for now, it was not the only major story he was involved in.

I met Ben Bradlee in 1995, when he wrote his autobiography, a book called A Good Life.

So here now, from 1995, Ben Bradlee.

Ben Bradlee died in 2014. He was 93.


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