Washington Post Mortem

Ben Bradlee, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s handler in the FBI-plotted toppling of the Nixon administration, has died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 93. Bradlee fought the Nixon administration over the publishing of the Pentagon Papers, then let Woodward and Bernstein run wild through the muddled Watergate break-in. Bradlee’s connections to attempts to crash the White House date to Nov. 1, 1950 when he hopped off a streetcar in front of the White House as two Puerto Rican nationalists attempted to shoot their way into Blair House in an attempt to kill President Harry S. Truman. Bradlee also was the man in charge when Janet Cooke won her Pulitzer. Normally, this would be a good thing. In Cooke’s case, her story about an 8-year-old heroin addict was revealed to be as fact-based as The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Or your typical Bill O’Reilly book.