With over 50 years of writing and editing for the nation's best newspapers and magazines, Benjamin C. Bradlee is one of the giants of American journalism. He has had a front row seat to some of the biggest news events of our time and was afforded a rare glimpse into the lives and times of the world's greatest leaders.
Ben Bradlee is currently vice president at-large of The Washington Post. He was executive editor of The Post from 1968 to 1991 and managing editor for tree years prior to that.
His career at The Washington Post began in 1948 as a reporter covering the federal courts. He left The Post in 1951 to become press attach for the State Department at the U.S. Embassy in Paris. Leaving that assignment in 1953, Bradlee joined Newsweek's Paris bureau, where he spent four years as European correspondent. He traveled extensively in Europe and the Middle East reporting on the Anglo-French invasion of Suez and the Algerian rebellion, Geneva Conferences, and North Africa.
He returned to Washington in 1957 as Newsweek's political correspondent and was later named Washington bureau chief. During this period he began intensive coverage of presidential campaigns and covered the Kennedy and Nixon campaigns in 1960. In 1965 Bradlee rejoined The Post as managing editor and became executive editor in 1968.
In 1971 The Washington Post published the Pentagon Papers, a secret history of the Vietnam War. This was a prelude to the Post's investigations of the Watergate scandal starting in 1972, exposing a cover-up scheme by the Nixon administration that resulted in President Nixon's eventual resignation. The Post won the Pulitzer Prize for its Watergate coverage.
A Good Life: Newspapers and Other Adventures, a book of his memoirs was published in September 1995 by Simon & Schuster. He is also the author of That Special Grace, A Tribute To President Kennedy, which was published in 1964 (Lippincott) and Conversations with Kennedy, published in 1975 (W.W. Norton).
Bradlee is the former chairman of the Historic S. Mary's City Commission, (St. Mary's City, Maryland) and a member of the Board of Trustees at St. Mary's College of Maryland.
He was educated at St. Mark's School, Southboro, Massachusetts, and Harvard College, where he received a B.A. degree. He is married to journalist and author Sally Quinn.
Bradlee's worldly experiences make for captivating speeches for any audience.
