- Ben Bradlee oversaw the Washington Post during Watergate
- He died Tuesday in Washington at the age of 93
(CNN) -- Ben Bradlee, the zestful, charismatic Washington Post editor who guided the paper through the era of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate and was immortalized on screen in "All the President's Men," has died. He was 93.
Bradlee began end-of-life care at his home last month after suffering from Alzheimer's disease and dementia for several years. He was the executive editor of The Washington Post from 1968 to 1991, during which time the paper covered the downfall of President Richard Nixon in the Watergate scandal.
Ben Bradlee, the charismatic Washington Post editor who guided the paper through the era of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate, has died. He was 93. 
Executive Editor Bradlee in his office, June 18, 1971, after he received a call from the Justice Department asking for a voluntary halt in the Pentagon Papers series. 
Katharine Graham, publisher of The Washington Post, and Bradlee leave U.S. District Court in Washington on June 21, 1971. The newspaper got the go-ahead to print the Pentagon Papers series on the Vietnam War. Later, the U.S. Court of Appeals extended for one more day a ban against publishing the secret documents. 
Graham and Bradlee leave federal court in Washington during 1971 court hearings on publication of the Pentagon Papers. 
Bradlee and Deputy Editorial Page Editor Meg Greenfield, right, listen with another staff member to a statement being read by Post Publisher Katharine Graham during the 1975 press strike at the newspaper. 
Reporters Carl Bernstein, left, and Bob Woodward in the newsroom in 1973, during the Washington Post's ongoing coverage of what became known simply as Watergate. 
In April 1973, Woodward, left, and Bernstein work the Watergate story from the Washington Post newsroom. 
Bernstein, left, and Woodward, along with other editorial employees, walk off the job at the Post in Washington, April 8, 1974, after the local arm of the American Newspaper Guild went on strike against the paper. 
In 1956, journalist Bradlee writes from his office in Paris. 
A 1994 photo portrait of the former Washington Post executive editor. 
Bradlee in 1994, during 19th Annual Academy of the Arts Lifetime Achievement Awards gala in New York. 
Bradlee and Sally Quinn in Los Angeles in 1980. 
Bernstein, left, and Woodward speak to reporters in June 2005, after the identity of their Watergate scandal source "Deep Throat" was confirmed to be former FBI official Mark Felt. 
Bradlee and Quinn attend a November 2013 gathering of Washington insiders who were in the city during the presidency of John F. Kennedy. 
In September 1963 -- some two months before he was assassinated -- President John F. Kennedy played golf with Bradlee at Newport Country Club in Rhode Island. Accompanying them are first lady Jacqueline Kennedy and Antoinette Bradlee, his second wife. 
President Barack Obama awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Bradlee in the East Room at the White House on November 20, 2013. The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the nation's highest civilian honor, presented to individuals who have made meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors. 
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Life of Ben Bradlee 
Woodward and Bernstein remember Bradlee 
2006: Ben Bradlee on 'Deep Throat' 
2005: Ben Bradlee on journalism ethics 
Bernstein: Bradlee a 'galvanizing' figure 
Click through to see people who passed away in 2014. 
Ben Bradlee, the zestful, charismatic Washington Post editor who guided the paper through the era of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate and was immortalized on screen in "All the President's Men," died Tuesday, October 21. He was 93. 
Fashion designer Oscar de la Renta died on Monday, October 20, close friends of the family and industry colleagues told CNN. He was 82. 
"August: Osage County" actress Misty Upham was declared dead by a Washington coroner after her body was found along a river in suburban Seattle on Thursday, October 16. 
Actress Elizabeth Pena died Tuesday, October 14, according to her manager. She was 55. 
Isaiah "Ikey" Owens, the keyboardist in Jack White's backing band, died Tuesday, October 14. The musician also played with bands such as Mars Volta and Free Moral Agents. He was 38. 
Mark Bell, who founded the highly influential techno-music duo LFO and later collaborated with Bjork on several iconic albums, died of complications from a surgery, his record label said Monday, October 13. 
Actress and comedian Jan Hooks died in New York on Thursday, October 9. Her representative, Lisa Lieberman, confirmed the death to CNN but provided no additional information. According to IMDb.com, Hooks was 57. 
Geoffrey Holder, a versatile artist known for his ability as a dancer, actor and a pitchman for 7Up, died from complications due to pneumonia, his family's attorney said on October 6. Holder was 84. 
Paul Revere, leader of the 1960s rock band Paul Revere and the Raiders, died October 4 at his home in Idaho, according to the band's website. He was 76. 
Emmy-winning actress Polly Bergen, whose TV and movie career spanned more than six decades, died on September 20, according to her publicist. She was 84, according to IMDb.com. 
Singer George Hamilton IV, known as the "International Ambassador of Country Music," died at a Nashville hospital on September 17 following a heart attack, the Grand Ole Opry said in a press release. He was 77. 
Northern Ireland's former first minister and former Democratic Unionist Party leader Ian Paisley has died, his wife, Eileen, said in a statement on September 12. He was 88. 
Richard Kiel, the actor best known for playing the James Bond villain "Jaws," died September 10 at a California hospital, St. Agnes Medical Center spokeswoman Kelley Sanchez said. He was 74. 
Joan Rivers, the sassy comedian whose gossipy "can we talk" persona catapulted her into a career as a headlining talk-show host, best-selling author and red-carpet maven, died September 4. She was 81. 
Jimi Jamison, lead singer of the 1980s rock band Survivor, died at the age of 63, it was announced September 2. 
Acclaimed actor-director Richard Attenborough died on August 24, the British Broadcasting Corporation reported, citing his son. Attenborough was 90. 
Don Pardo, the man whose voice introduced the cast of NBC's "Saturday Night Live" for decades, died at the age of 96, the network announced August 19. 
Skateboarding legend Jay Adams died of a heart attack August 14 while vacationing in Mexico with his wife. He was 53. 
Ed Nelson, best known for playing a doctor in the 1960s nighttime soap opera "Peyton Place," died on August 13, his family said. He was 85. 
Actress Arlene Martel, whom "Star Trek" fans knew as Spock's bride-to-be, died in a Los Angeles hospital August 12 after complications from a heart attack, her son said. Martel was 78. 
Actress Lauren Bacall, the husky-voiced Hollywood icon known for her sultry sensuality, died on August 12. She was 89. 
Actor and comedian Robin Williams died at his Northern California home on August 11. Williams apparently took his own life, law enforcement officials said. He was 63. 
JJ Murphy, an actor who was set to join the "Game of Thrones" cast, died August 8, his agent said. He was 86. 
Actor Charles Keating, who had been fighting lung cancer for several years, died on August 8, his son Sean Keating said. Charles Keating was known for his role of villain Carl Hutchins on the daytime drama "Another World." He was 72. 
James Brady, the former White House press secretary who was severely wounded in a 1981 assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan, has died, the White House said on August 4. He was 73. Later in the week, authorities told CNN they are investigating it as a homicide. 
Theodore "Dutch" Van Kirk, the last crewman of the U.S. plane that dropped the first atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945, died of natural causes on July 28, according to his daughter Vicki Triplett. He was 93. 
James Shigeta, a prolific and pioneering Asian-American actor whose 50-year career included the movies "Die Hard" and "Flower Drum Song," died in his sleep in Los Angeles on July 28, his agent said. He was 81. 
Skye McCole Bartusiak, who played Mel Gibson's youngest daughter in "The Patriot," died July 19, at her home in Houston, her mother said Sunday. She was 21. While investigators didn't immediately determine a cause of death, Bartusiak had been suffering from epileptic seizures, according to her mother. 
James Garner, the understated, wisecracking everyman actor who enjoyed multigenerational success on both the small and big screens, died of natural causes on July 19. He was 86. 
Broadway legend Elaine Stritch died July 17. According to her longtime friend Julie Keyes, Stritch died at her home in Birmingham, Michigan, surrounded by her family. She was 89 years old. 
Blues guitarist and singer Johnny Winter died July 16 in a Swiss hotel room, his representative said. He was 70. 
Nadine Gordimer, a South African author who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1991, died on July 13, according to her family. She was 90. 
Renowned conductor Lorin Maazel died from complications of pneumonia on July 13, according to his family. He was 84. 
Grammy-winning jazz bassist Charlie Haden, whose music career spanned seven decades and several genres, died July 11, according to his publicist. He was 76. 
Drummer Tommy Ramone, the last living original member of the pioneering punk band The Ramones, died on July 11, according to the band's Facebook page. He was 65. 
Eileen Ford, who founded the Ford Model Agency 70 years ago, died July 9 at the age of 92, the company said. 
Richard Percy Jones, the actor who gave Pinocchio his voice in the 1940 Disney movie, died at his California home on July 8. He was 87. 
David Legeno, known for playing Fenrir Greyback in the "Harry Potter" movies, was found dead July 6, by hikers in a remote desert location in Death Valley, California. He was 50. "It appears that Legeno died of heat-related issues, but the Inyo County Coroner will determine the final cause of death," read a press release from the Inyo County Sheriff's Department. "There are no signs of foul play." 
Rosemary Murphy, an Emmy Award-winning actress known for her roles in the movie "To Kill a Mockingbird" as well as TV soap operas "All My Children" and "Another World," died July 5 at the age of 89. The New York Times cited cancer as the cause of death. 
Olympian and World War II hero Louis Zamperini, the subject of the book and upcoming film "Unbroken," died July 2 after a recent battle with pneumonia. The 97-year-old peacefully passed away in the presence of his entire family, according to a statement. 
Walter Dean Myers, a beloved author of children's books, died on July 1 following a brief illness, according to the Children's Book Council. 
Paul Mazursky, a five-time Oscar nominee who directed and wrote such films as "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice," "An Unmarried Woman" and "Down and Out in Beverly Hills," died at the age of 84, his agent said July 1. 
Actor Meshach Taylor died June 28 at his Los Angeles-area home, his agent, Dede Binder, said. He was 67. Taylor had fought a terminal illness and faded markedly in recent days, Binder said. His wife, children, grandchildren and mother surrounded him as he passed away. 
Legendary soul singer Bobby Womack died June 27, according to Womack's publicist. He was 70. 
Character actor Eli Wallach, seen here in "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly," died on June 24, according to a family member who did not want to be named. Wallach was 98. 
Major League Baseball Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn died June 16 at the age of 54, according to a release from the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Gwynn, who had 3,141 hits in 20 seasons with the San Diego Padres, had cancer. 
Radio personality Casey Kasem died June 15. He was 82 and had been hospitalized in Washington state for two weeks. 
Former Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Chuck Noll died June 13. He had suffered from Alzheimer's and heart disease. He was 82. 
Ruby Dee, an award-winning actress whose seven-decade career included triumphs on stage and screen, died June 12. She was 91. 
Former baseball star Bob Welch passed away on June 9 after suffering a heart attack, according to the Los Angeles Dodgers. He was 57. 
British actor and comedian Rik Mayall, who appeared in the TV series "Blackadder," died June 9 at the age of 56, his agent said. The cause of death was not immediately reported. 
Chester Nez, the last of the original Navajo code talkers credited with creating an unbreakable code used during World War II, died June 5 at his home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the Navajo Nation President said. Nez was 93. 
Ann B. Davis, who played Alice the maid on "The Brady Bunch," died from a subdural hematoma on June 1. She was 88. 
Maya Angelou, a renowned poet, novelist and actress, died at the age of 86, her literary agent said on May 28. Angelou was also a professor, singer and dancer whose work spanned several generations. 
Australian racing legend Jack Brabham died on May 19, according to Brabham's son David. Brabham, 88, was a three-time Formula One world champion. 
Malik Bendjelloul, the Oscar-winning director of "Searching for Sugar Man," died suddenly on May 13, police said. He was 36. 
H.R. Giger, the Swiss surrealist artist whose works of sexual-industrial imagery and design of the eponymous creature in the "Alien" movies were known around the world, died on May 12. He was 74. 
Former professional tennis player Elena Baltacha died at the age of 30 after losing her battle with liver cancer on May 4. Before retiring in November, she had reached a career high of 49th in the world rankings. 
Al Feldstein, who guided Mad magazine for almost three decades as its editor, died on April 29, according to a Montana funeral home. He was 88. 
Oscar-nominated British actor Bob Hoskins, known for roles in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and "Mona Lisa," died April 29 at age 71, his publicist said. 
Hall of Fame basketball coach John "Dr. Jack" Ramsay, who became a television analyst years after winning a league championship with the Portland Trail Blazers, died on April 28, according to his longtime employer ESPN. Ramsay was 89. 
Former Barcelona soccer coach Tito Vilanova, who had been battling cancer, died at the age of 45, the club announced April 25. 
Country singer Kevin Sharp died from "complications due to cancer" on April 19, his mother told CNN. He was 43. 
Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, the middleweight boxing contender who was wrongly convicted of a triple murder in New Jersey in the 1960s, died April 20 at the age of 76, according to Win Wahrer, the director of client services for the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted. 
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the influential, Nobel Prize-winning author of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and "Love in the Time of Cholera," passed away on April 17, his family and officials said. He was 87. 
Jose Luis "Cheo" Feliciano, a giant of salsa music and a Puerto Rican legend, died in a car crash April 18 in San Juan, Puerto Rico, according to police. He was 78. 
Days after being inducted into World Wrestling Entertainment's Hall of Fame, WWE superstar Ultimate Warrior died April 8. Born James Hellwig, he legally changed his name to Warrior in 1993. He was 54. 
Comedian John Pinette, 50, was found dead in a Pittsburgh hotel room on April 5. Pinette died of natural causes stemming from "a medical history he was being treated for," the medical examiner's spokesman said. An autopsy will not be done because his personal doctor signed the death certificate. 
Mickey Rooney, who started as a child star in vaudeville and went on to star in hundreds of movies and TV shows, died April 6 at the age of 93. 
DJ Frankie Knuckles, a legendary producer, remixer and house music pioneer, died March 31 at the age of 59. 
Kate O'Mara, the British actress best known for playing Joan Collins' sister on the 1980s show "Dynasty," died March 30. She was 74. 
Ralph C. Wilson Jr., the founder and longtime owner of the NFL's Buffalo Bills, died at age 95, the team announced March 25. 
Gwar lead singer Dave Brockie died March 23 at the age of 50, his manager said. The heavy-metal group formed in 1984, billing itself as "Earth's only openly extraterrestrial rock band." Brockie performed in the persona of Oderus Urungus. 
James Rebhorn, whose acting resume includes a long list of character roles in major films and TV shows, died March 21, his representative said. Rebhorn was 65. 
L'Wren Scott, a noted fashion designer and girlfriend of musician Mick Jagger, was found dead of an apparent suicide March 17, according to a law enforcement official. She was 49. 
Drummer Scott Asheton, who co-founded and played drums for the influential proto-punk band The Stooges, died March 15. He was 64. 
Comedian David Brenner, a regular on Johnny Carson's "The Tonight Show," died after a battle with cancer, a family spokesman said March 15. He was 78. 
Actress Sheila MacRae, who portrayed Alice Kramden in a 1960s revival of "The Honeymooners" on "The Jackie Gleason Show," died on March 6, according to her family. She was 92. 
Spanish guitarist Paco de Lucia, seen here in 2006, died February 25 of an apparent heart attack. He was 66. De Lucia transformed the folk art of flamenco music into a more vibrant modern sound. 
Actor, writer and director Harold Ramis, seen here on the far left with fellow "Ghostbusters" Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray, died at his Chicago-area home on February 24. He was 69. Other popular Ramis films include "Stripes," "Groundhog Day" and "Analyze This." 
Maria von Trapp, seen here posing with a photo of her family, was the last of the singing siblings immortalized in the movie "The Sound of Music." She died February 18 of natural causes at her Vermont home, according to her family. She was 99. 
Journalist Garrick Utley died at age 74 following a long battle with cancer, his wife of 40 years said in February. Utley worked for CNN after his 30-year career at NBC News. 
Devo guitarist Bob Casale, known by fans as "Bob 2," died February 17, his brother and band mate announced. Casale was 61. 
John Henson, the son of Jim Henson who is perhaps most notable for his portrayal of Sweetums on "The Muppets," died after a "sudden, massive heart attack," his family's company said on February 15. 
Veteran actor Ralph Waite died at 85 on February 13, according to an accountant for the Waite family and a church where the actor was a regular member. Waite was best known for his role as John Walton Sr. on 'The Waltons." 
Sid Caesar, whose clever, anarchic comedy on such programs as "Your Show of Shows" and "Caesar's Hour" helped define the 1950s "Golden Age of Television," died on February 12. He was 91. 
Hollywood child star Shirley Temple, who became diplomat Shirley Temple Black, died February 10 at her Woodside, California, home. She was 85. 
Joan Mondale, the wife of former Vice President Walter Mondale, died on February 3, according to a statement from the family's church. 
Oscar-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman was found dead in his Manhattan apartment of an apparent drug overdose, law enforcement sources said February 2. 
Maximilian Schell died on February 1 in a Austrian hospital with his wife by his side, his agent Patricia Baumbauer said. He was 83. Schell was nominated for an Oscar three times. He won in 1962 for "Judgment at Nuremberg." 
Legendary folk singer Pete Seeger, known for classics such as "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" and "If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song)," died of natural causes in New York on January 27, his grandson told CNN. He was 94. 
Ruth Robinson Duccini, who played one of the Munchkins in the 1939 classic "The Wizard of Oz," died on January 16. She was 95. 
Former Playboy centerfold Cassandra Lynn Hensley was found dead at a friend's home in Los Angeles, the coroner there said on January 17. Hensley was 34. Her cause of death was not immediately known. 
Hiroo Onoda, center, salutes after handing over his military sword on Lubang Island in the Philippines in March 1974. Onoda, a former intelligence officer in the Japanese army, had remained on the island for nearly 30 years, refusing to believe his country had surrendered in World War II. He died at a Tokyo hospital on January 16. He was 91. 
Russell Johnson, center, stands with Alan Hale Jr., left, and Bob Denver in an episode of "Gilligan's Island" in 1966. Johnson, who played "the professor" Roy Hinkley in the hit television show, passed away January 16 at his home in Washington state, according to his agent, Mike Eisenstadt. Johnson was 89. 
Ariel Sharon, whose half century as a military and political leader in Israel was marked with victories and controversies, died on January 11 after eight years in a coma, Israeli Army Radio reported. Sharon was 85. 
Franklin McCain, seen center wearing glasses, one of the "Greensboro Four," who made history for their 1960 sit-in at a Greensboro Woolworth's lunch counter, died on January 10 after a brief illness, according to his alma mater, North Carolina A&T State University. 
Larry Speakes, who served as President Ronald Reagan's press secretary, died January 10 at his home in Cleveland, Mississippi, following a lengthy illness, according to Bolivar County Coroner Nate Brown. He was 74. 
Poet Amiri Baraka, who lost his post as New Jersey's poet laureate because of a controversial poem about the 9/11 terror attacks, died on January 9, his agent said. Baraka was 79. 
Sir Run Run Shaw, the media tycoon who helped bring Chinese martial arts films to an international audience, died at his home in Hong Kong on January 7 at age 106, the television station he founded said. 
Stage, TV and film actress Carmen Zapata, who founded the Bilingual Foundation of the Arts as a means of of introducing "the rich and eloquent history of the diverse Hispanic culture to English-speaking audiences," died on January 5 at her Los Angeles home. She was 86. 
Portugal football legend Eusebio, who was top scorer at the 1966 World Cup, died from a heart attack on January 5 at age 71, said his former club, Benfica. 
Alicia Rhett, who had been one of the oldest surviving cast members of the classic film "Gone With the Wind," died on January 3 in her longtime hometown of Charleston, South Carolina, a retirement community spokeswoman said. She was 98. 
Singer Phil Everly, left -- one half of the groundbreaking, smooth-sounding, record-setting duo the Everly Brothers -- died on January 3, a hospital spokeswoman said. He was 74. 
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Photos: People we lost in 2014 "He was diagnosed a while ago, but it became obvious that he had a serious problem about two years ago," his wife, Washington Post columnist Sally Quinn, said in a recent C-SPAN interview.
In November, President Barack Obama awarded Bradlee the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor awarded to civilians.
"Ben was a true friend and genius leader in journalism," Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein -- the Post duo who broke and pursued the Watergate story -- said in a statement. "He forever altered our business. His one unbending principle was the quest for the truth and the necessity of that pursuit."
Bradlee was, in his way, Washington royalty: friend to John F. Kennedy, overseer of the capital's most important newspaper, a mover and shaker in a tailored suit. In one era, when politicians and journalists were chummier, he kept the capital's secrets; in another, he exposed them. He was descended from Boston Brahmins and easily hobnobbed with the wealthy and eminent.
Still, even as he became one of them, Bradlee always maintained his skepticism of Washington power players. And it only grew stronger over time.
In a 1995 interview with CNN's Larry King, Bradlee said he had observed "an enormous increase in not telling the truth, lying" during his career covering government. Asked whether it was Democrats or Republicans who lied more, Bradlee said, "Well, the whole mob."
It was a pair of scandals that made Bradlee a national figure.
In 1971, the Post and The New York Times decided to publish the Pentagon Papers, leaked classified documents that showed that the war in Vietnam was not going as political leaders and the military brass portrayed it. Bradlee, publisher Katharine Graham and the Post fought the objections of Richard Nixon's administration all the way to the Supreme Court, which upheld the newspapers' right to publish the documents.
The editor said the fight propelled the Post into the upper echelons of American journalism.
"The Post was still looking for a seat at the big table," he recalled. "We weren't at the big table yet. We very much wanted to go there."
A year later, Post reporters Bernstein and Woodward led the way in unraveling Watergate, the story of the break-in and coverup that ultimately led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.
"The stakes were enormous," Bernstein recalled. "Every day the White House, the leader of the free world, his spokesman would get up and attack The Washington Post, attack Ben Bradlee by name. Attack Bob Woodward and myself. And (Bradlee) backed us up."
In the movie version of Woodward and Bernstein's "All the President's Men," Bradlee -- played by Jason Robards, who won an Oscar for his performance -- put it succinctly while bucking up his reporters: "We're under a lot of pressure, you know, and you put us there. Nothing riding on this except the First Amendment of the Constitution, freedom of the press, and maybe the future of the country."
Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974.
Journalists react to 'icon' Ben Bradlee's death
An early start in journalism
Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee was born August 26, 1921, in Boston, Massachusetts. Though his immediate family wasn't wealthy, the family tree included 17th-century Bay Staters, wealthy New York lawyers, ambassadors and artists. His great-uncle, Frank Crowninshield, was the first editor of Vanity Fair.
Bradlee survived a childhood battle with polio. He served on a destroyer in the Navy during World War II and was a veteran of more than a dozen battles, including the Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines.
After the war, Bradlee helped start the New Hampshire Sunday News, a small paper in Manchester, which folded after two years. He was hired as a reporter for the Post in 1948 but left after three years to become assistant press attache at the U.S. Embassy in Paris.
He jumped from that position back into journalism in 1954 as a European correspondent for Newsweek magazine and returned to Washington with it in 1957, becoming bureau chief after the Post bought the magazine in 1961.
Bradlee paid a key role in the transaction. In the '50s, Newsweek was a sleepy publication, a distant second in the newsweekly world to the towering Time magazine. "Newsweek was a shambles," recalled Osborn "Oz" Elliott, who edited the magazine from 1961 to 1976, in an oral history. "The whole staff was shot through with drunks, incompetents, and hacks."
Bradlee encouraged Phil Graham, the publisher of the Post, to buy the downtrodden magazine. Graham "loosened the purse strings on every front," recalled Elliott.
Meanwhile, Bradlee had established a key friendship. As a reporter in the 1950s, Bradlee became friends with John F. Kennedy, who had moved into a house on the same block after winning his first election to Congress. Bradlee later wrote two books about his onetime neighbor and future president, the first in 1964, just after Kennedy's assassination.
Opinion: What Ben Bradlee stood for
A story that changed the country
In 1963, Phil Graham committed suicide and his widow, Katharine, took over as owner of the Post. In 1965 Bradlee became managing editor and, three years later, executive editor. The Post's most tumultuous and heroic era was about to begin.
The Pentagon Papers consisted of a history of the Vietnam War commissioned by Lyndon Johnson's secretary of defense, Robert McNamara. After one of the report's compilers, Daniel Ellsberg, slipped copies to The New York Times, the resulting articles prompted the Nixon administration to issue a temporary restraining order against publication. The Post joined with the Times in a case that threatened the livelihood of both papers. They were vindicated when the Supreme Court ruled, 6-3, to lift the ban against publishing.
Then came Watergate.
The scandal that brought down a president started with a "third-rate burglary," in the words of Nixon's press secretary, at the Democratic National Headquarters in Washington's Watergate complex. Woodward and Bernstein, assigned to the story, started realizing that the crime was no local matter -- and that it appeared to reach into the government's highest offices.
Woodward was aided by a source inside the government nicknamed "Deep Throat" after a controversial porn movie of the era. Only Bradlee, Woodward and Bernstein knew his identity, which remained a subject of speculation for more than 30 years. Only after Mark Felt, the associate director of the FBI under Nixon, came forth in a 2005 Vanity Fair article did Bradlee confirm that, yes, Felt was the man.
Bradlee said his instincts told him that Felt's information was reliable, but one worry nagged him:
"If this is such a good story, where in the hell are the rest of the newspapers?" he recalled.
During a CNN interview a few days after Felt's identity became known, Bradlee discussed the risks that anonymous sources can be unreliable: "I think there was danger of that, and I suspect that a lot of young reporters who were attracted to the business faced that danger. But, you know, that's what editors are for."
One lesson of the "Deep Throat" saga, he said, "Is that when the press says they will protect a source that they will, in fact, protect a source."
The Post won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service -- the first time a Washington newspaper won the Pulitzer board's most prestigious award -- for its Watergate coverage. "All the President's Men," Woodward and Bernstein's book about breaking the story, was made into a movie starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as the two reporters and Robards as Bradlee.
"It's awfully hard to beat the truth, to beat being right," he said in the 2005 interview with CNN. "And the fact of the matter is that Woodward and Bernstein were right. 'Deep Throat' was right."
"He was demanding, but in just the right measure," said Bernstein in 2012. "You want to please him."
Ben Bradlee and the future of journalism
After Watergate
The Watergate scandal inspired a generation of students to go into journalism, many hoping for a big investigative story like Watergate. At the high-flying Post, Bradlee was taken down a peg when one such story caught him off guard.
A reporter named Janet Cooke wrote a piece, "Jimmy's World," about an 8-year-old drug addict. The story won a Pulitzer Prize in 1981, but also raised questions about Cooke's reporting. The reporter soon admitted that she had never interviewed Jimmy and that the story was fabricated.
"It is tragedy that someone as talented and promising as Janet Cooke, with everything going for her, felt that she had to falsify the facts," Bradlee said at the time. "The credibility of a newspaper is its most precious asset, and it depends almost entirely on the integrity of its reporters. When that integrity is questioned and found wanting, the wounds are grievous, and there is nothing to do but come clean with our readers, apologize to the Advisory Board of the Pulitzer Prizes, and begin immediately on the uphill task of regaining our credibility."
The Post returned the Pulitzer and Cooke resigned from the paper.
In other ways, however, the Post was personally rewarding. Bradlee met his third wife, reporter Sally Quinn, at the paper. The two married in 1978 and had a son, Quinn.
Bradlee also has three other children by his first two marriages. Son Ben Bradlee Jr. was a longtime reporter and editor for the Boston Globe and has written four books, most recently a biography of Boston Red Sox icon Ted Williams.
Ben Bradlee's memoir, "A Good Life," was published in 1995.
Bradlee was 91 in 2013 when he was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom. President Barack Obama spoke to his impact on journalism and democracy.
"With Ben in charge, the Post published the Pentagon Papers, revealing the true history of America's involvement in Vietnam; exposed Watergate; unleashed a new era of investigative journalism, holding America's leaders accountable and reminding us that our freedom as a nation rests on our freedom of the press," Obama said at the ceremony.
Bradlee, though, insisted he just did what he loved.
"There's nothing like a good story," he said in a 2012 interview with the Post. "If it's true, and if you've got it, and you can get some more, you're in business."
