Former ‘Post’ Executive Editor Ben Bradlee On Publishing The Pentagon Papers

Bradlee served as executive editor of The Washington Post from 1968 to 1991. In 1995, he told Fresh Air about his decision to publish the top secret documents related to U.S. policy making in Vietnam.

Bradlee says that the Post had to publish because:
  1. To have held back, when the New York Times published, would be to have
    • ceded the right to publish and
    • make the Washington Post an ally of the Whitehouse and
    • confined the Post to a low status
  2. Built up the Prestige of the Post