Benjamin Bradlee

Benjamin Bradlee was executive editor of The Washington Post from 1968 to 1991 who passed away at the age of 93 of natural causes. He became famous in 1972 when he successfully he challenged the federal government over the right to publish the Pentagon Papers. He oversaw Bob Woodward's and Carl Bernstein's work documenting what is now called the Watergate scandal. Born 1921 in Boston, Massachusetts, Bradlee studied at Harvard before receiving his naval commission and then he joined the Office of Naval Intelligence. After the war, in 1946, Bradlee began working as a reporter at the New Hampshire Sunday News, a venture he started. He sold the paper in 1948 and began working as a reporter for The Washington Post. Three years later, he became assistant press attaché in the American embassy in Paris, France. In 1952 he joined the staff of the Office of U.S. Information and Educational Exchange (USIE) and the next year he began working for Newsweek. In 1965 after Newsweek is sold to the Post, he is promoted to