Legendary Watergate editor Ben Bradlee dead at 93

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Ben Bradlee, the hard-charging editor who guided The Washington Post through its Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Watergate scandal and invigorated its newsroom for more than two decades, died Tuesday. He was 93.

Bradlee died at his home of natural causes, the Post reported.

As managing editor first and later as executive editor, the raspy-voiced Bradlee engineered the transformation of the Post from a sleepy hometown paper into a great national one. He brought in a cast of talented journalists and set editorial standards that brought the paper new respect.

Bradlee got an early break as a journalist thanks to his friendship with one president, John F. Kennedy, and became famous for his role in toppling another, Richard Nixon, helping guide Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s coverage of the Watergate scandal.

“We shall not see his like again,” Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York said when Bradlee retired from the Post newsroom in 1991, adding that the editor’s standards would endure “for ages hence.”

President Barack Obama is remembering Bradlee as a “true newspaperman” who transformed The Washington Post into one of the country’s finest papers.

Bradlee died Tuesday at his home in Washington at the age of 93.

In a statement issued Tuesday night, Obama says Bradlee set a standard for honest, objective and meticulous reporting that encouraged many others to enter the profession.

Just last fall, Obama awarded Bradlee the Presidential Medal of Freedom during a ceremony at the White House.