Ben Bradlee on His Life and Career in Journalism, JFK, Watergate, Pentagon Papers (1995)

Ben Bradlee one of the last things you tell us in your book is that you gave an anonymous gift to Harvard and nothing's happened well I have I I didn't want to have any publicity about it while I was still editor the post I thought that would be inappropriate and so I yeah I tried to thank the two influences and my life one was Kennedy and one was Phil Gramm and the Washington Post so I thought giving something to the Kennedy School endowing a chair would be appropriate and I did and they've been looking ever since why is it taking so long I don't know we don't find somebody when you give an endowment to Kenny like the school at the Kennedy School at Harvard how does it work well you have first thing you have absolutely no say about who it is and I think if you suggest someone that guy that person is dead but you know they they're going to announce someone one of these days well we'll let someone do they're going to teach and study the relationship between the press and public policy what it is what it should be how it could be improved and press the politics the two things that have monopolized my attention for a long time if you were going to give the opening lecture what's the first thing you'd tell students about that relationship today well tell it truth and most politicians don't and a lot of newspapers don't because they don't know the truth you know that's really that the jam we find ourselves in words worth trying the best newspapers we're trying to find the truth and we have a limited amount of time and limited sources what what I mean if the president United States looks you in the eye and says he can't tell you the truth about Watergate because it involves national security you got to run it but it's a lie what are them four or five jobs you've had in your life well I've been I've been they're all been in the newspaper business except one and that was I was on a little tiny paper and Beverly masse as a 15 year old kid my old man had to drive me to work I was a help start a newspaper in New Hampshire small weekly paper where I was a reporter for The Washington Post for a to sort of odd years I was a diplomat in I was the press attache in the American Embassy in Paris generally consistent accepted were disastrous diplomat and then I've been a foreign correspondent for Newsweek you know and for the Washington Post since 1965 what's your hometown Washington Boston I was born in how long did you live there well I lived 20 years I couldn't wait to get out it's a lovely sitting there but I couldn't wait to get out and get calling see some interesting people and do some interesting things you learn early that your brother Freddie was an alcoholic risen alcoholic yeah and that your father drank a lot yeah what impact did that have on your life well it made me much more appreciative of the how hard it is for some people to get on top of that problem and it taught me enormous admiration for them my God my brother is I admire him and honestly she worked so hard and where is he today he's in New York City your sister my sister died a couple years ago and but but it taught me understanding tolerance that's what it did was your dad like my dad was a was a wonderful man he was a all-american football player turned sort of Boy Wonder banker and then he went and he went broke in the depression and he this is your dad with there's what my sister that I she was married yeah and then he went broke and he had to he he became the manager of the cleaning force and the janitor faucet the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston three grand a year before that and this was a guy who had made pretty good dough and then he he sold he one of his friends and had invested in a commercial deodorant called Santa van it was a crystal that turned purple when you put water in it and he scrubbed out an entire car railroad car the Boston main railroad to try to sell it he worked hard and he had a woman he didn't talk very much but he had a fantastic sense of humor and a great gift for words you didn't say much but when he said it it was worth listening where'd you go to school I went to Harvard College I went to prep school before that and I had a kind of event silver spoon that gave me a wonderful education where'd you get the middle name crown shield crowninshield crown in shield yes you that's a big excuse me it's a very it was a great name they were great shipping family in Salem Massachusetts the man I was named for was was both a congressman and Secretary of the Navy generally alleged to have been a lousy Secretary of the Navy didn't do anything it was a good strong strong family and then it got kind of watered out you spent time in the Navy I spent a long time in the Navy and I've just now been able to articulate how much I loved it how long were you in the name I was about I was in it in destroyers in the Pacific Ocean for three and a half years from 42 to 45 and I it turned out I was good at it I loved it I had you know it at 21 years old 21 years old I had was I became qualified for officer of the deck which means that you run a destroyer for four hours 375 men and this ship 360 feet long goes 40 miles an hour and at 21 year old Greek major was was given the orders it's a it's it was heavy and it was great break for me you were married I was already mad at married when I was 20 Jim got my dad's permission without your dad's from no I had to have it to get a license gene Saltonstall that's a famous name yeah who was James saltonstone well she was a cousin of the of the Leverett Saltonstall who's the well-known politician senator from Massachusetts we were both hopefully young how long were you married 13 years Jimmy children one child who's a son who's now an assistant managing editor at The Boston Globe named names our son Ben yeah he wishes I hadn't named him Ben he once said I wish you'd called me Harvey why well he he was I think he felt that having the same name was unnecessary you know any never trust anybody watched you over the years remembered I don't know how many years ago you could probably tell us that you had a I remember seeing a debate with you with Bernie McQuaid Bernie McQuaid and William Loeb yeah didn't you have a debate with him a long time ago but sent somebody show I did I did Bob fired me I wanna I needed this we went out of business and sold our paper to Loeb and I needed the I needed to get fired because I needed severance pay which is 400 you know 400 bucks and change so I had to and I would I had the I was working as a stringer for Time magazine and it was week at that time and I didn't like the exit interview and he begged me now his Bernie McCoy the gentleman here on the where your finger is right there and he's he died there's a guy on the right is Blair clock who's had been a childhood friend of mine since the 30s and he was the publisher they were coke publishers and then they had a fight what relationship is Bernie McQuaid or to Joe McCoy he now runs the Manchester unity father I used to carry little Joe McQuaid around on my shoulders I think when you set out to write this book what was the objective well I I had thought that it would be interesting to put it all down and and get judged by it I think there's something in us that wants to be judged I had I had to wrestle with with writing about yourself and Boston you don't talk about yourself you're not supposed to talk about yourself that's supposed to talk about your family not supposed to talk about money not supposed to talk about women but and I wrestled with that for a while especially the part about yourself examine your motives and relationships and what they meant to you when did you start it oh god I'm embarrassed probably three years ago I started it well I I mean it took so long I hadn't you know I had but I've made a pretty good living as a writer but when when I was just getting to be confident as a writer they made me an editor and I didn't write much I write I wrote leads 125 words something like that hundred words Howard Simons who was the managing editor at the post used to say I was a great sprinter that you know I could go like the dickens for 200 words but after that I got lost and he probably was ready you think a bunch of people in the beginning barber Fineman Oh Barbara fireman is a was my researcher and I lost her but I should have she writes books herself when she's she is now she's no no helping Hillary Clinton I'm not sure I'm supposed to say that but I just did and carries a Kevin wanting a wife and whining yeah who was a researcher and terrific I mean these you know I worked for Newsweek for a while and when in Newsweek when you were writing and you ran into something you didn't know you could always put parentheses CPC checkers please check you know you couldn't remember somebody's age or how to spell his name or whether you had a man in the middle initial or nevermind what year and we you were talking about and so if you have some help that people that can do that and then much more actually serious stuff you can speed up the process and you know otherwise you'd have to get up go to the library interrupt the flow of your your thought Tom Wilkinson or tongue will considers an AME at the Washington Post and system as an assistant managing editor and he he's been a friend for years but he and I he helped me by we sat down and read The Washington Post in microfilm for five or six years the first five or six years I was there and we just had to help chalk my memory and he would ask me you know who L is that and what do you think of him and why did you play that story where you did and it was wonderfully helpful in getting me into the you know get me in the swing of it how did you decide what to put in the book if it was a marking experience in my life I it got in and I also there's some things that have been it was just so joyous in my life such fun I had that whether they mock me or not I just put him in I was I'm an upbeat soul and I have had a good time in unroot - a good life and so I put on a lot of those good times him - some of the bad ones but how did you get your job at the post I got my job at the post by I had I had cashed my my savings I had 800 bucks and I bought a first a railroad ticket to Washington with a stop in Baltimore and then I had some other interview scheduled one in Chicago one in Utah and one in Santa Barbara I got to the railroad station I had a letter to the ED to an editor the Baltimore Sun and when I got there it was raining as it has never rained before and I looked out the train and I said I didn't have an umbrella I'm gonna drown if I get out now so I said I'll continue on down to Washington and pick up Baltimore on the way back and I got to Washington they offered me a job they'd heard about this paper in New Hampshire that we started someone had quit the day before and so I got it doing what the lowest of the low the first my well I ended up in in the courts municipal court and which is a great place to learn the city and then I did a general assignment which is the best job that that is on a newspaper and I I got in trouble I thought because the Washington Post was losing a million bucks a year in those days and it was a very small staff there's no expansion I I wanted to you know cover the hill cover the White House and they had people there they were entrenched so I began looking for another job tell a story about a swimming pool episode yeah well that was one of the things I did on general assignment and it must have been 1949 I think it could have been 1952 1954 also and there were race riots at East Potomac Park which was is a public park here run by the Interior Department six pools in Washington six public pools three were were sort of de facto black and three were white and this was right after the 48 election and some some people who had been members of the Progressive Party thought it would be a fun summer project to see if they could integrate some of the white pools so they brought some black kids into the white pool and all hell broke loose there were pitched battles that really were there were three or four hundred whites on one side of the park three or 400 blacks and each had weapons they had sticks with nails in them they had the park police were mounted and were charging into these crowds and something it was a it was an extraordinary I think we were there 36 hours hand running and I was with a another reporter and we came back to the post at 6 or 7 o'clock at the second night and you know we were arguing how they were gonna play the thing shirley was on page one probably not the lead but maybe the awfully we couldn't find it on page one because it wasn't there we couldn't find it in the a section we looked in the Metro section and we couldn't find it on that page one and we finally kept thumbing through going madder and madder and madder and it was inside somewhere and it was a story not about the riots but about the question of whether pools should be integrated or something I way down in the story there was a mention of a disturbance they called it an incident a disturbance and an incident and so I was young and sore and I started mouthing off but this great liberal paper and it all of a sudden I felt a little knock on my shoulder and I turn around and there was Phil Gramm the owner this was eight nine o'clock nine o'clock and he was in a tuxedo and he said come on upstairs with me Buster did you know him then I knew him as the owner and there was a much smaller paper then and and you know he he hung out he hung around we saw him I knew him but I didn't know him well at all so I went up to his office and he ushered me in and there were three men in tuxedos also one of them was the President Truman's top assistant Clark Clifford the other was the Secretary of the Interior Krug and his deputy Oscar Chapman and he said tell him what you just told me and so you know I didn't need the second invitation and I let it go and all sorts of I didn't embellish it but I didn't hold anything back and then I was dismissed and he said that's all and out he went and I didn't know what happened I felt better but it turned out that we learned much later that he had made a deal with the government forced them to make a deal in which he said closed that pool the one that had been that that there was that issue immediately and agreeing now to open all six pools on a totally integrated basis next year and or Bradley story runs on page one tomorrow tough real hardball and not something that would be tolerated now and it's kind of interesting I've thought a lot about it since since I wrote that because you have to the pools did open next year totally integrated no incidents no race riots no race riots in Washington four years after that and you have to ask yourself whether such a deal which I would instinctively call a deal with the devil whether it in fact was that or whether it in fact saved lives even I don't know the answer jump way beyond what beyond Watergate to year 23 days in the woods when I wrote the book well the Kennedy book yeah you tell the story about first of all why did you spend 23 days alone out in West Virginia well because I had a cabin there and I wanted I wanted to to exercise Watergate I've been living with that for a long time and I wanted to do something entirely different what year was 1974 it was two days after President Nixon resigned I had these notes of some hundred and thirty 40 conversations I'd had with President Kennedy and I thought it would make a book and so I went up into the woods to translate maybe 30 or 40 thousand words of notes into a book and I decided to go up there to go up there alone the telephone didn't work all I had was the radio to listen to Orioles game at night after I got up at 6:00 worked until my fingers hurt which was generally about noon 1:00 and then I'd go out in the woods and burn brush and shop which is my avocation we married then I was not married I was involved but I still was alone now you have been married three times at what point in this process did you marry the second woman I got married to Tony Bradley in 1950 this is really unfair 56 how many children and we had two kids married sally quinn in we in 78 back to the woods you kept referring the fact you could just clear your head in entirely over those 23 days well i in the woods i I can empty my head I don't think about anything and except you know whatever my project is to clear clear this area take down that tree do whatever well about the guy that showed up yeah well him freely read it haven't you that's an interesting I mean what was that I tell them tell us well I was sitting on that I typed on the it was it was August and I was typing on the honor this was a log cabin it's a really rickety place still it's still very much standing and I was writing on the porch which overlooked a kind of a gorge that went down into the Capon River and I was typing away and all of a sudden I saw someone come up with it who was dressed in a black felt hat black all in black he looked it might have been an Amos hunter and he had a gunned rifle or shotgun I forgotten which crook Dover is in his arm and I couldn't believe it this August it's no hunting season open and which doesn't bother those guys up there much but I just noted that he had a gun and this was a week or so after Nixon had left and so he I said howdy nervously and he he said howdy and he came up up the hill slowly slowly slowly and he got you know ten or fifteen feet away from her hours hitting and that he said have you been Bradley and my heart sank I really didn't know who this guy was and so I said yes and iced have said something nervously or something and he said well I gotta tell you I hated everything you did about Nixon and Watergate I just think you were wrong as can be a wrong as hell or whatever whatever he said but he put his cards right down on the table and I can't tell you how remote this place is it's four miles in off of the main road and if something had happened to me I'd uh you know the vultures would I had me and did you think it was all over well I didn't know it occurred to me what was he doing with the gun I mean I finally asked him what he was hunting and he said looking for some squirrels but you know I was very skeptical in those days about what people told me anyway it did scare me and I got up and tried to move him on and said well I gotta get back to work come here this way he walked off do you ever run into anybody anymore that doesn't know who Ben Bradlee is oh sure I mean it's only since this book that I have any real visual recognition you know I think they know the name a lot of them but that faces was not Oh at common where was this picture taken it was taken the day I left the city room of The Washington Post and they had a really a wonderful sort of to our goodbye in the middle of the day and they were telling stories that was made me laugh what do you think of the experience of talking this book out like this well I'm I'm I am stunned I am just stunned at the interest I am stunned by the Hungerford that radio the television has for people I mean you got to have no raw material and when that need collides with the desire of authors and publishers to sell books it's it's awesome I didn't know anything about talk radio really until until the last ten days and there is some very intelligent and interesting I mean I've been on FM rock and roll stations and I've been the rule I was told that if it has 250 watts go on it and then I've been with people who who really show an interest in understanding what are they most interested in well I mean after they get through Watergate and maybe they'll notch it up once to the Pentagon Papers they go pretty fast too Janet Cooke and girlfriends John Kennedy's girl his and mine you you say just about everything in here about your own personal life well it seems that it to some people that it's just about everything I decided that I would include experiences that really changed me and influenced me that if I was gonna write a book about myself and about my times that I ought to do that and I was I let a rather repressed life as a kid by the time I was really interested I was in on a destroyer and you know would go I never saw women of any kind and so I included this some and very briefly I don't know why people for her I mean I never spent any time there's no port detail there of any kind he you used to get some when you're in the the boss's chair at the post you get some notes once in a while from an anonymous woman I did get yes what kind of notes were they they were they were very Ament they were kind of mash notes and I didn't I didn't know who sent them until the person involved could the post to go be a television anchor in New York and confessed to me that she had written them and said that she was leaving because she couldn't work out her emotions about me her name Sally Quinton what did she say in those notes well I can't remember them now but it was it was when you save them no I didn't save them a night I didn't save them at the time so I just I said you know I thought it might be somebody playing a practical joke you know this was the days of dirty tricks so I moved on and I'm awfully glad that she confessed to being the author then what happened great got married some time later is it a hard problem in a newsroom male-female relationships working on the job I mean did you have any rules of the post about commingling no you can't make rules you can't you can't discuss you can't regulate that stuff no and she called me mr. Bradley until the day she said goodbye we were and then she left for New York so it was a difficult beginning I know the sure I mean it's it's no more difficult than newspaper than it isn't what you could call real life was the first time you met Jack Kennedy pushing baby carriages in Georgetown on a Sunday afternoon and I think it was probably 58 both of you pushing baby carriages well I mean but both families I think I was pushing I don't know I can't remember whether he was and we just we had young children together and he had moved into on the same block as I was and we we ended up in his backyard in his garden and we're talking and then we actually were having to go to to a party that night together and we ended up as friends you say in the book that Jacqueline Kennedy never quite got over the fact that you were a newsman and and a friend at the same time yeah I think I think she had trouble that I had trouble with it for a while everybody had trouble with it until it became natural Kennedy I mean I never dissembled and I I would occasionally I worked for Newsweek fan I occasionally wrote things that displeased him and ended up in the doghouse for at least once for three months I mean I never saw him after compared to seeing him once or twice a week and I think Jackie was uncomfortable with that and I could understand that when did she stop talking to you about three weeks after after the assassination the we went we spent a couple of weekends with her right after the you know the end of November and and then and then and you know the what we had had together as a foursome didn't show up again as a threesome and she moved to New York anyway I mean my Tony Bradley helped her buy the house that she bought and a Georgetown and then she left I mean she in effect never was happy and Washington after that and and left and she didn't like the book I wrote about Kennedy she thought that she just said she thought the language wasn't bright and that you know Kennedy and I having having been in the Navy together at that at a time when vocabularies are being formed and we used four-letter words not with any sense of what they meant just did and I reported them she you said that you'd even you passed her a couple of times and she wouldn't even acknowledge you after that happened twice yeah and you remembered it though oh I remember yeah I sure did I mean to go from from as close as we were to to the deep freeze is unnatural and I it hurt me I mean I heard me I could live with it but I wish that I didn't want to recreate it because times change and and the caravan moves on but I didn't want to be I didn't want to be in any sense of cost I'll get a picture in here of your former wife Tony yep which one in the picture on the far side with the stripes who are the rest of the things the next was her mother Ruth Pinchot and then the president and then Tony sister Mary Meyer at the Pinchot estate in their uncle was governor of Pennsylvania when did you find out that President Kennedy had a relationship with your wife sister I found it out after after Mary was murdered on the towpath in Georgetown and we received a call from that same night from a friend of ours who was Mary's close friend who told us that of the existence of a diary that that phone call came from Japan and that Mary had expressed a desire that if anything ever happened to be that diary be destroyed when you went looking for the diary you found James Jesus Angleton I did who was he well James Jesus Jesus angle and at that time was and for many years later it was in the CIA at that time he wasn't quite the the ogre that that he became painted as he was an interesting intensely involved in his job he was a great fly fisherman he raised orchids he was a great admirer of Elvis Presley he was an all-around interesting man and his wife Cicely angleton was we were all friends together and his wife was a particular friend of Mary Meyer and she too had been told that of the existence of this diary and that if anything happened it should be it destroyed Mary wanted it destroyed so angleton that we we soon divined that's why he was there but how he got in we didn't know because it was locked and we found him we didn't find it in Mary's house we found it later in a studio and we found Jim Angleton trying to pick a lock to get his way in and anyway it was some more we were all more naive at that well we found the diary we it was what Mary Maya was an artist and artists have things called paint books and which is predominantly the pages the pages are quite it's a it's a high quality paper thicker and many most of the pages had swatches of paint on it and then slight descriptions of how that color was achieved and she was a colorist that was the school of a painting that she belonged to and color was particularly important and then on a couple of the other a couple of pages maybe a dozen in all there was there was some handwritten descriptions of what was obviously an affair no names and what was obviously in affair with the president and we did you ever see that diary by did you personally sauce I did where is it now it's burned but it it took for a long time to get burnt because and in our Tony thought that she had no skills at burning it at Bernie should know how to destroy a document and it was I'm sure she didn't consider giving it to me to destroy so she gave it to her friend who was a member of an organization that presumably was very good at destroying things and she gave it to Angleton and to destroy and he said he would and then two or three years later two years later I think when when the president's affair would marry Maya became public she wanted to know she saw Angleton and said you did destroy that document didn't you and Angleton said no that he hadn't and so no one knows what Angleton did with that thing but he gave it to gave it back to Tony and destroyed it in a fire James Angleton's dead Mary Meyers dead John F Kennedy did and what was that Mary Mayer they were find the person that killed her there was a trial and the jury acquitted him a man was she was murdered on the towpath a man was found about 50 feet away crouching in the Potomac River and he he said that he was fishing and had fallen in and nobody believed him but he was acquitted he had been identified only by one person and that person was looking across the canal into the afternoon Sun and that lawyer was able to create a reasonable doubt you write this deep in your book about this whole event in your life we were left to work out how the news that changed our opinions of President Kennedy and Mary Mayer meaning the affair the answer for me was not not all that much they were attractive intelligent and interesting people before their paths crossed in this explosive way and they remain that way in my mind did the president ever lie to you he never discussed women with him I mean imagine having dinner with your wife and the president and his wife and I know what you're gone I don't know what all the things you're gonna talk about but I know one thing you're not gonna talk about and that is extracurricular fooling around by either one of you it's not gonna happen so I did not know people have trouble believing that but it's the truth is there any difference in your mind what John Kennedy did when it came to these extracurricular Affairs and what President Nixon did lying to the country or water well except I never heard Kennedy lie about it I mean nobody ever asked him I mean the rules were changed afterwards but you know you were around then people that the number one item on the on everybody journalists agenda was not to pin some sexual escapades on the president there were really other things that had higher priorities but changed this whole approach by the median well I think I don't know the answer to that but I think two things one is I think the counterculture that that that was born in this country in the sixties changed Americans attitudes about sex among other things they changed American attitudes on all institutions and and then I think the Watergate you know and when people start a government people started to lie put those two things together and people sort of said by god presidents not gonna lie to us anymore and especially about sex the Pentagon Papers well what was that well that was the that was the great the Pentagon Papers were was a 7,000 page study commissioned by Robert McNamara to explore how come we got end of yet man and it was considered even though it stopped at 1968 or 69 in 1971 the New York Times got a copy of the 7,000 pages and they worked for months on it and the word on the local TomTom grapevine was the New York Times had a big big story and they were gonna bust it on the Washington Post and we were gonna quiver there and four days and pretty much what happened they'd it was a big big story because Vietnam was such a powerful story at that time three four stories a day on page one about Vietnam for years why did you send some reporters to Chief Justice burgers door and what happened well in the middle of in the middle of we finally published it we finally got a copy of it and we published it three days four days after the New York Times and there was a very heck we published I think three days worth before we got in joint just the way the New York Times had been enjoy and the lawyers in the case was going from the judge gazelles caught the district court up to the appeal court down down in this way and we thought that somewhere along the line the the there was going to be some all happening late at night that there would be some some appeal to the chief justice by the lawyers for the government if when we won so we sent some reporters out there to reporters out there that night just to wait to see so that we know who and when and what it was happening to Chief Justice burgers house to Chief Justice burgers house and after waiting a while they went they went up and rang the door I mean this is this is one of the great sights that I ruin my that I conjure up in my life twelve o'clock at night twelve o'clock at night and the Chief Justice comes down and is in a what do you call them night robes his jammies and with a gun and he didn't know who the hell it was out there and there was this very dicey conversation while these two reporters established their identity to the justices satisfaction and why do you open the door I don't know because there was so sweet and an innocent-looking maybe I don't know and anyway he said there won't go down in the end of the road and stay there and but the the the trouble was that I didn't they all wanted to abide by the guys that the post wanted to run that story and we were on our way up to the Supreme Court with an appeal and I just thought that maybe the Chief Justice I didn't want our anger that Chief Justice and I kept it out of the paper and I'm not particularly proud of that but we did it that story that story until nick von Hoffman who was a columnist sneaked it in two or three weeks after the Pentagon Papers was all over a former booknotes guest is a Washington Post reporter than even David Mariner she's written a book about President Clinton and Endre mental order in the middle of your book you tell a story about how David Marin has played a role in the Janet Cooke story well he was the he was I think his title was a deputy Metro editor he was Bob wood Woods deputy when wood wood was a Metro editor and we had learned that that that Janet Cooke had probably fabricated this entire story about an eight-year-old heroin addict but she hadn't admitted it yet and we had sort of been trying to get it to admit that how old was she late 20s what year was this 1981 she was a black woman black woman beautiful black woman and a terrific report a great writer Vassar Bradley she wasn't have a so glad see what that was the problem she'd attended Vassar for one year and that's how we were tipped off that when she actually you know the worst possible thing that could happen to her happen she won the Pulitzer Prize for this story and the Pulitzer committee put out her biography and in the biography which was written from information she had supplied it said that she was a Vassar honors graduate and I got this call some days later saying from something the dean's office at Vassar saying I think we got a little problem and we sure did but anyway marinus some editors said you know take us to the house of this little kid when she couldn't do it and we had people speak foreign languages to her and that she couldn't speak this although she said she could and then finally we left her alone with marinus and it was then that she had said I was scared they'd leave me along with you because I can handle the other guys but I can't handle you but she confessed that she made it all up and you say he tried to find her and get her to talk about it what happened now oh now I I there's one person at the post who tells me that she stays in touch with Janet cook and I asked her to ask Janet cook if she would please talk to me because I remain absolutely hypnotized by that case it was a very very serious blow to our credibility and and she didn't the word came back that she didn't want to see me were ish I don't know she was then in Toledo this was some months ago I think she was in Toledo that's why she came from that's where mom and dad lived a lot of names are in your book in journalism and you have some opinions of them I'm a fellow who you say is the son of a minor count or he's a minor well I think he was the son of a count and he was the editor of The Washington Times are not foreground yeah but he's a he's a professional journalist and he was my and is a friend we were I succeeded him as the Newsweek correspondent in Paris and you know I didn't approve of the the Reverend moon or his paper and I think that and Arno and I just disagreed about that what do you think of him today he's my friend what do you think of al Neuharth you mention him there not as much as he mentioned me in his book well I think Neuharth is is so he's so interested in polishing his reputation that piece a little off base he but he didn't I mean he got in in real trouble when he wrote a book by trying to buy buy copies of his book himself or getting the foundation that he had to buy them to manipulate the New York Times bestsellers you follow this kind of thing closely there are those who say that you said nice things about Bill Sapphire in your book and he threw you a wet kiss quote-unquote in his review of your book in The Times did you read meri McGrory sensitive to that review he said that who the hell is sapphire to talk about withholding documents and I think Sapphire you know I I thought sapphire was a when he first came into the newspaper business he came in as fresh from being a insider a Nixon insider and I was not ready to accept his credentials I think if you know if Richard Cohen isn't the best columnist in Washington he is that way and I think that I thought that for years so I didn't know who was gonna write that review and in fact I'd heard that Wicca was gonna ride it Tom wicker and then it turned out that Tom wicker wrote the review for the Washington Post which I couldn't find out they wouldn't tell me and I didn't want to poke around for a fear that I'd get caught asking and create some suspicions in someone's mind who's written in the worst review well I and what what didn't you like about I don't know the worst review I know the worst headline to the review which was that what you're trying to get me to say no I haven't had on a Wall Street Journal wrote a review by man called John Corey and the headline was the great horny editor and I thought that was you know extraneous you don't like the Pulitzers very much well I'm so conflicted about it because I'd rather win him than lose them and yet I think it it distorts I think people work towards Pulitzers when they should be working on a story I doubt that that the best journalism always gets the Pulitzer Prize I don't think it does were you disappointed when Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward came to you and said we think we should have won that Pulitzer not the post yeah I think that was a day that unsub er second thought they shouldn't have and I think they do agree now I mean the post the the public service prize and the Pulitzer is won by a newspaper and the citation although the citation talked about the work of the extraordinary work of Bernstein and would would the paper won the prize and I told them that they would be going to become folk heroes whether they want it or the post won it and the post should have won it the post especially yeah you know the editorial writers her block the great cartoonist and Katharine Graham many of the people who really put their put everything in it would you say hard simons wasn't very happy the way he was portrayed well he you know he wasn't he thought that I got more credit than I deserved and he got less credit than he deserved and I'm not gonna get into that he he I've talked to Alan Pakula about it who was the director of that movie and who was a great friend of how it's an admirer and he his feeling is that you had to have sort of one catalyst type editor and not two or three so many people worked so hard on that it's really it's unfair to single one out and I got singled out you wrote this on page 128 I am instinctively Pro sunshine against closed doors Pro let it all hang out and smoke filled rooms I believe that truth sets man free I have to yield every inch of the high ground but I am less sure today than I was when Phil Gramm made the secret deal that the public is best served by knowing everything the second an incident happens what did you mean by all that well I think since I've left the newsroom the speed that that is so important to journalists oh my god you hear and you've got to get it in is less important to me now I think that maybe I just wonder if that's all I mean I just wonder whether the the incident with Phil in the and the race riots make made me what my Greek teacher used to say sober second thought is that was the public badly served by that deal I don't know my instinct just instinct is to say yes but I'm not sure I could prove that would you've been in his biggest successes you've been without JFK and your friendship with him oh I think I would like to think so I I wouldn't have been without Katherine Graham that's for sure but with Kennedy I don't know that the the it gave me a profile it sure did but there was a little rub to it I mean there were people saying that I that I you know I went bail for Kennedy and I didn't tell the truth all I knew about Kennedy which is not true but that that was the minor minor minor downside of the relationship would you advise a young reporter today be as close to a well sources you were I don't know you you can't say you know you can't assign a guy to cover a politician and sort of understood that that person will get close you've got to get close to know you've got to get close to the politician and to the people around him or else you won't know him you won't be able to report accurately I don't see how you could say you know get close but don't get too close you know as soon as he really gives you something good bail out it's a great deal of self regulatory mechanisms in that relationship if you think for a minute that that my colleagues weren't reading every word in Newsweek about Kennedy and if they had found some you know consistent exclusives can I can imagine huse ID who was my opposite number on time going both to the president and a Salinger and people like that saying why the hell you what are you doing giving Bradley all that good stuff and you don't give it to us second self regulatory thing is the person the reporter himself I don't want to go through life and end up in history as a as a Batman for any man as a quote they used to call him coat catches in Boston you know the guy gets his coat and takes his coat off and there's somebody around there to catch his coat and the third regulatory forces the editors they know of the relationship because it has to be it has to be public knowledge you have to tell your editors that you've developed this relationship they loved it skinny I was getting out of the White House they just loved it and they dined out on it but they wouldn't they they went every through everything with a fine-tooth comb again what's it like living in Robert Todd Lincoln's former home well you know when we Sally and I had a great house on over in Dupont Circle and then this miracle occurred we had a baby and we lost the we lost the guestroom and we lost each of us lost to study so we went looking for for a a bigger house Sally said we have to have a bigger house and she found one I mean it was feeding the biggest house in the world but it's it it's this beautiful house that was built in 1790 and Robert Todd Lincoln's wife died they in 1935 you free yeah I mean it's most people would think that Lincoln's daughter-in-law died a whole lot before that biggest house in Georgetown no I don't think it's the biggest but it's you don't have to might have to measure it it's it's big has it got all that many rooms but they're big rooms and it's got a it's got some a big big garden when does your book your next book how to read a newspaper come out I wish you'd tell me I'm not going to you know I haven't had that really I've had a vacation every year obviously but I haven't had days off and somebody calls me up and says would you like to play golf today I haven't never done that so I like to smell the flowers for a while I'm 74 years old but the present plan calls for me to teach a course at Georgetown in the fall of 96 fallen a six-week about a year from now a year from now and then I would think that in the process of that I could be writing a book so god I just got finished this wouldn't give me a break here's the book and Bradley newspapering and other adventures a good life thank you for joining us is it over it is over

Channel: Remember This

Views: 15,860

Rating: 4.8235292 out of 5

Keywords: Watergate Scandal (Crime), Pentagon Papers (Book), John F. Kennedy (US President), His, News, Work, News Broadcasting (TV Genre), Television (Invention), Journalism (Literary School Or Movement)

Id: 3esS3tQ7ujU

Length: 57min 7sec (3427 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 25 2014