Ben Bradlee

Ben Bradlee, left, with Katharine Graham in 1971

 This morning, I have a lump in my throat. Ben Bradlee passed away last night. Ben was the editor-in-chief of The Washington Post in 1972, when the Watergate burglary took place. With support from Katherine Graham, the owner of The Post, Bradlee encouraged two young reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, to follow the story. Graham herself emphasised that Bradlee was “the classic leader at whose desk the buck of responsibility stopped.” Although it was The New York Times that first exposed a link between the burglars and the White House, the story went cold and the only newspaper to keep it going was The Post.

Bradlee received many honours for his work. The Post was awarded a Pullitzer Prize for its reporting on Watergate. Just recently, President Obama presented Bradlee himself with The Presidential Medal of Freedom. All this and more can be read in the many obituaries that will be published in the days to come.

In 2003, I was an undergraduate at Brunel University. (Yes, I was a mature student, although I admit I was overripe category!) For my dissertation, I chose Watergate. To be precise, I posed the question whether Nixon’s resignation of the presidency in 1974 was a direct result of constitutional process or a lucky circumstance.

One afternoon, I was in the basement coffee room of the offices of Life Magazine in Mayfair, reading back issues from the 1970s. A journalist came into the room and asked what I was doing. When I told him, he replied, “pity you weren’t here two weeks ago. Ben Bradlee was in town.” I replied that I thought he had died. “Common mistake,” came the answer, “Jason Robards bit the dust, not Ben.” Robards had played Bradlee in the movie All the President’s Men.”

My wife and I had a trip to America planned for that fall, so I wrote to Ben, asking if would let me interview him. Eventually, he agreed to give me 30 minutes early one afternoon. I had to travel from New York to DC by train. A hurricane two days previously had closed the airports. After a four hour journey, I arrived in good time at The Post’s office in F Street, armed with tape recorder and three tapes (just in case), pen and pad, (in case of recording malfunction and a camera. I sat outside Ben’s office, waiting for him to return from lunch. I had my back to him as he walked along the corridor. For an unaccountable reason, I knew he was walking towards me for 15 seconds before I saw him.

The 30 minute interview lasted for almost two hours. His large office had bookcases filled to bursting, flat surfaces had many pictures but not many of the great and good but mostly his family. He had a gruff voice, which was familiar to me, having watched Jason Robards’ portrayal shortly before I left London. Although now in his 80s, he was still a powerful man.

Ben let me tape the conversation. I re-read the transcript this morning. There are memorable passages. For example, of Bob Woodward, Bradlee puts it succinctly: “Woodward has ears that can hear a pheasant break wind at a hundred yards.” Talking about the evolving of the Watergate scandal, Ben categorised it: “God, it never got worse, it always got better, that story, and we are very dogged. I am more dogged than intellectual.”

The part I enjoyed was when I played Devil’s advocate and suggested that Nixon had so many big guns pointed at him, no one could have survived the onslaught. Bradlee leapt on my remark: “Nixon was plainly guilty. He did it, he did it. The Nixon failure after doing it was that the cover up did not work and the press was responsible for that.”

That day I was treated to a two-hour lesson in living history. What a privilege. But, sadly, in all the excitement, I forgot to have a photograph taken!

I gained the lasting impression that Ben Bradlee was truly a force of nature. He had a presence that verged on the electric. His track record as a newspaperman established that he had good and sound judgment, he was loyal both to those who worked for him and for whom he worked, he was a man of principle and a person who exemplified the finest traditions of journalism.

Ben Bradlee, you will be missed.