Ben Bradlee Defends Bob Woodward

Ben Bradlee, the former executive editor of The Washington Post, on Monday rushed to defend his star reporter, Bob Woodward, after a report this weekend claimed Bradlee questioned Woodward’s reporting methods during the Watergate scandal. New York magazine this week features a lengthy excerpt from a biography of Bradlee by author Jeff Himmelman—a onetime protégé of Bradlee and Woodward—in which Himmelman claims to have found a previously undiscovered 1990 interview where Bradlee questioned some of the famous aspects of how Woodward and his partner, Carl Bernstein, received information from the anonymous source Deep Throat, later unmasked to be FBI Associate Director Mark Felt. “There’s a residual fear in my soul that isn’t quite straight,” Bradlee reportedly said. Bradlee insisted on Monday that he “always trusted” Woodward and “always will.”