Ben Bradlee

That was Ben Bradlee who walked past us in the lobby of The Washington Post today.  In my opinion, Bradlee was the most important newspaper editor of the late 20th century.  As Executive Editor, he (on the right) supervised Bob Woodward (left) and Carl Bernstein (center) when they wrote the slowly evolving series of articles on the Watergate scandal, which eventually led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon and won a Pulitzer Prize.  Bradlee's role was crucial: he pushed "Woodstein" (that's what he called Woodward and Bernstein) to tighten their reporting and write better stories, then he backed them up when doubts emerged about their investigation.  Bradlee, Woodward and Bernstein were the only three people who knew the identity of the story's most important source, "Deep Throat" -- the most famous anonymous source in the history of modern journalism -- until former FBI Associate Director Mark Felt outed himself in 2005.

If you're interested, I highly recommend reading Bradlee's memoir, A Good Life.  For more on Watergate, you can't beat All the President's Men -- either the original book by Woodward and Bernstein and/or the movie, which stars Robert Redford (Woodward), Dustin Hoffman (Bernstein) and Jason Robards (Bradlee).  I think Robards won an Oscar for his portrayal of Bradlee.