Tributes were paid last night to Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, a lion of American journalism, on his death at the age of 93.
Mr Bradlee famously steered the newspaper's coverage of Watergate, a scandal that cost President Richard Nixon his job and made journalistic heroes of the inimitable editor and Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the two young reporters he trusted with the biggest political story of their generation.
He died at his Washington home of natural causes, the Post reported. He had been suffering from Alzheimer's disease. His wife, journalist Sally Quinn, said last month that his health had declined in recent months.
The charismatic, raspy-voiced editor transformed the Post from a middling home-town title into a permanent fixture in the US media establishment and one of the world’s leading newspapers during his 23 years as executive editor.
A Navy veteran of the Second World War, Mr Bradlee joined the Post as an editor in 1965 after working as a reporter in the 1950s.
In the interim he reported for Newsweek magazine in Paris and Washington, where he was a close friend and neighbour of John F Kennedy. He ascended the ladder at the Post, from deputy managing editor to managing editor, second in command, to executive editor within three years of his return.
In 1971, Bradlee and his ever-supportive publisher, Katharine Graham, went against legal advice and pressure from government figures in publishing excerpts from the Pentagon Papers, the secret government study of the US involvement in Vietnam, after the New York Times broke the story.
The Nixon administration brought legal action to block further publication of the papers but the Supreme Court ultimately ruled in favour of the newspapers supporting their right to print the leaked documents.
Watergate was the trailblazing story of his time at the Post. The scandal sparked by the newspaper’s intensive local reporting stemming from a burglary at the Democratic offices in the Watergate complex in June 1972 grew to a political inferno resulting in the only US president ever to resign.
Mr Bradlee was himself subjected to personal public attacks from senior figures in the Nixon administration in response to the newspaper's dogged investigation of the clandestine, illegal activities of White House aides.
The scandal led to criminal charges being brought against 69 people, of which 48 were found guilty, including Nixon’s attorney general and chief of staff. The controversy culminated in Nixon’s resignation in August 1974.
Mr Bradlee became an American household name when he was played by actor Jason Robards in the Hollywood movie All the President's Men, which recounted the step-by-step reporting of Watergate by Woodward and Bernstein. Robards won an Oscar for his portrayal of the newspaperman.
The Post’s coverage of Watergate won the paper the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for public service, one of 18 Pulitzers awarded to title during Bradlee’s tenure.
The lowest point of his time in charge at the Post was in 1981 when the newspaper had to return a Pulitzer after a young reporter, Janet Cooke, was found to have fabricated a story, entitled "Jimmy's World," about an eight-year-old drug addict. The editor offered his resignation but he was supported by Donald Graham who had succeeded his mother as publisher of the newspaper.
Last night, Mr Bradlee was praised in warm testimonies by former colleagues who recalled his courageous editing, brash manner and penchant for short, expletive-laden orders and white-collar, striped shirts.
A common theme running through the recollections was of an editor who backed his reporters in the face of strong outside pressure, from political and corporate interests, with the only condition that their stories be accurate.
"For Benjamin Bradlee, journalism was more than a profession - it was a public good vital to our democracy," President Barack Obama said in a statement released shortly after news of Mr Bradlee's death was reported.
“A true newspaperman, he transformed the Washington Post into one of the country’s finest newspapers, and with him at the helm, a growing army of reporters published the Pentagon Papers, exposed Watergate, and told stories that needed to be told - stories that helped us understand our world and one another a little better.”
The president said that the standard he set for “honest, objective, meticulous reporting encouraged so many others to enter the profession.”
Last year Mr Obama awarded the former Post editor the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honour for an American civilian, for his news coverage during the Vietnam War and Watergate.
“Ben was a true friend and a genius leader in journalism,” Woodward and Bernstein said in a joint statement. “He forever altered our business. His one unbending principle was the quest for the truth and the necessity of that pursuit. He had the courage of an army.”
In his obituary, the newspaper said: “From the moment he took over The Post newspaper in 1965, Mr Bradlee sought to create an important newspaper that would go far beyond the traditional model of a metropolitan daily.
“He achieved that goal by combining compelling news stories based on aggressive reporting with engaging feature pieces of a kind previously associated with the best magazines.”
Mr Bradlee is survived by Ms Quinn, his third wife, and his four children. His two previous wives, whom he divorced, predeceased him.
