What the Eulogists Didn't Tell You About Katie Graham and the {Post}

Click here for Full Issue of EIR Volume 28, Number 32, August 24, 2001 Book Review What the Eulogists Didn’t Tell You About Katie Graham and the Post by Edward Spannaus A most useful antidote to this falsification of history, is the book Katharine the Great by Deborah Davis. Two aspects Katharine The Great: Katharine Graham of it must be considered. First, what Davis wrote about the And Her Washington Post Empire Post and its relationship to U.S. intelligence community. And by Deborah Davis second, what happened when Davis tried to first publish the New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1991 (third edition) book in 1979. 322 pages paperbound, $14.95 In her preface to the third edition, Davis writes: “This is the third It would be hard to exceed the hypocrisy of the days following edition of a book origi- the official announcement of the death of Katharine Graham nally written shortly on July 17. Even in death, Graham still had the power to after President Nixon re- make those, otherwise considered powerful in their own right, signed as a result of the grovel at her feet. Washington Post’s in- Eulogy after eulogy cited Graham’s alleged courage, and vestigation of the Water- even gutsiness, with respect to two publishing events: the gate scandal. The con- Pentagon Papers, and Watergate. In both cases, the truth is ceptual center of the directly contrary to the legend. In both cases, the Post was book is the question: spoon-fed material from a section of the U.S. intelligence Could Katharine Gra- community, designed to discredit President John F. Kennedy ham, as publisher of the in the first instance,1 and to bring down President Nixon in Post, have been in the the second. Neither involved the least bit of courage on the position to end the Presi- part of Graham and her partner Ben Bradlee. dency of Richard Nixon The second, related area of stomach-churning hypocrisy by chance, or was that was the stream of adulations of Graham as a champion of free ability the result of speech and freedom of the press. In truth, Graham and the something deeply rooted and systemic?” Post stood for censorship, suppression, and distortion of the Davis goes on to note that such an idea is at odds with the news; her expressed view was that there are certain things conventional versions of Watergate, “in which Post reporters that the public does not have a right to know. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein are portrayed as finding out about Nixon’s crimes essentially by accident.” As she researched Katharine Graham’s power, Davis con- 1. According to Fletcher Prouty’s 1992 JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy, the so-called “Pentagon Papers” are very tinues, she found that both Katharine’s late husband Philip misleading, only marginally from the Pentagon, and were carefully selected Graham, and Ben Bradlee, whom Katharine hired as execu- to paint JFK as the villain of the story, and to shield the role of the CIA. tive editor in 1965, had handled strategic intelligence during The decision by Graham and Bradlee to publish the Pentagon Papers, World War II, and that “they had gone on to use their skills in after the New York Times did so first, was primarily a business decision; it propaganda or intelligence to create and reinforce peacetime was widely known at the time that the Post had the Papers, and other newspa- pers also had them and were prepared to publish; had the Post failed to definitions of patriotism.” publish, the Post’s reputation would have been seriously damaged, according We will describe Davis’s findings—and add a few of our to the thinking of Graham, Bradlee, and their advisers at the time. own—in the course of this review. But meanwhile, let’s jump 66 National EIR August 24, 2001 © 2001 EIR News Service Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission strictly prohibited. ahead, to the story of how Katharine Graham and Ben Bradlee quite scared,” being up against “Ben Bradlee, the hero of set out to stop the publication and circulation of this book— American journalism. .” ultimately resulting in the shredding of 20,000 copies of the In addition to his threat to sue New York magazine, first edition. Bradlee also got the Washington Journalism Review to sched- ule an article attacking the book. Soon thereafter, HJB “un- Champion of Free Press? published” Davis’s book, recalling all unsold copies and The mainline New York publisher Harcourt Brace Jova- shredding them—even requiring affidavits to ensure that no novich (HBJ) bought the rights to Katharine the Great in unsold copy of the book survived. early 1978, and announced publication for the Fall of 1979. In 1982, Davis sued Harcourt in Federal court in New HBJ’s chairman William Jovanovich had reviewed the final York. The court granted her request for discovery, to see manuscript and declared that Katharine Graham was not go- HBJ’s internal documents concerning the book. At that point, ing to tell him what he could publish. He lined everything up a new lawfirm (Fried Frank Harris Shriver and Kampelman— to make the book a best-seller, including selling rights to the no strangers to intelligence matters themselves) entered the Literary Guild, and selling an excerpt to New York magazine. case for HBJ, and offered Davis a $25,000 settlement if she Just before New York magazine went to press with the would waive her right to see the HJB documents. She declined excerpt, Ben Bradlee went bananas and threatened to sue, and the offer, and she got some of the documents. Among them, succeeded in stopping the publication of the excerpt. Two were letters from Katharine Graham to Jovanovich, appealing weeks later, Wall Street Journal intelligence reporter David to their personal friendship, and deriding Davis’s “CIA fan- Ignatius called Davis, lying to her that he was going to say tasy” about “Ben, Phil and others.” In a later letter to Jovano- that she was right about “Deep Throat.” (Davis had hypothe- vich from Katharine, that free-press champion gushed, “I was sized that the Post’s mysterious source was actually Richard full of admiration anyway for what you did and how you Ober, the CIA’s deputy chief of counterintelligence, and the did it.” author of the Agency’s “Operation CHAOS,” who had been Ultimately, HJB admitted that they knew of no specific working in the White House basement for Henry Kissinger misstatements in the book, and they settled the case with at the time of the Watergate revelations. Ober was ideally Davis out of court. situated: Bradlee had known him at Harvard, and Woodward knew him when Woodward was a Navy intelligence and com- The Bradlee Puzzle munications officer.) What really bothered and intrigued Davis, was Bradlee’s Ignatius demanded that Davis come to his office immedi- hysterical reaction to the book. Why had he cared so much ately, and that she bring her interview notebooks with her, so about what she wrote about him? He seemed most upset about he could be sure of the facts. However, when she answered the charge that he had done propaganda work for the CIA in his summons, Ignatius proceeded to grill her in an aggressive, the 1950s—one sentence out of the entire book. So Davis hostile manner. His subsequent review in the Wall Street went to work to see what more she could find out, including Journal ridiculed the book as “rubbish,” claiming it was full from the FBI’s files on the espionage case against Julius and of errors and wild conclusions. The Journal neglected to tell Ethel Rosenberg. its readers that its reviewer, David Ignatius, was the son of The product of a Boston Brahmin banking family, Ben Paul Ignatius,2 the former president of the Washington Post Bradlee had come to work for the Post around 1948; in 1951, Co.! Phil Graham sent him to Paris to become the press attache´ at Bradlee didn’t stop there. He sent a list of 26 alleged the U.S. Embassy. Soon, Bradlee was on the staff of the U.S. inaccuracies to HBJ, and advised the publishing house that Information and Educational Exchange, the predecessor of he probably wouldn’t sue for libel (no wonder, since he could the U.S. Information Agency, which was utilized as a propa- have been subject to court-ordered discovery), but Bradley ganda arm by the CIA and the State Department. threatened HBJ that he was prepared “to brand you as com- The documents examined by Davis described a massive pletely irresponsible, to tell author friends to steer clear of overseas propaganda campaign run by the U.S. government you as though you had the plague, to brand Miss Davis as a around the Rosenberg espionage case, to attempt to counter fool, and to put your company in that special little brand of what the U.S. government considered Communist propa- publishers who don’t give a shit for the truth.” ganda defending the accused spies. Bradlee played a key role Davis’s editor at HBJ came unglued, saying later, “I was in this, from his position in Paris. In December 1952, Bradlee flew from Paris to New York and appeared at the U.S. Attor- ney’s office. According to a Justice Department memoran- 2. Katharine Graham had hired Paul Ingatius, who had served as Secretary of the Navy and in other high civilian Pentagon positions, upon the advice dum, Bradlee said that “he was sent here to look at the Rosen- of her close friend and adviser Robert McNamara in 1969.

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