BEN Bradlee, the editor who guided The Washington Post through its Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Watergate scandal and invigorated its newsroom for more than two decades, has died aged 93.
As managing editor and executive editor, Mr Bradlee engineered the transformation of the Post from a sleepy home-town paper into a great national.
He had an early break as a journalist thanks to his friendship with one president, John F Kennedy, and became famous for his role in toppling another, Richard Nixon, helping to guide Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's coverage of the Watergate scandal.
"We shall not see his like again," Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York said when Mr Bradlee retired in 1991.
Actor Jason Robards took on the role of Mr Bradlee in his Oscar-winning portrayal of the editor in the box-office hit, All The President's Men. Mr Bradlee's marriage in 1978 to Post star reporter Sally Quinn - his third - added more glamour to his image.
He was one of the few to know the identity early on of Watergate source Deep Throat, revealed in 2005 as FBI official Mark Felt.
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