79 JFK AND BEYOND

For Lying Out Loud
Ben Bradlee Investigates the Politics of Lying

BEN BRADLEE IOP 2004 emerged as one of the most highly regarded newspaper editors of our time when, as executive editor of The Washington Post, he published the Pentagon Papers and later oversaw coverage of the Watergate scandal. Now vice president-at-large at the Post, Bradlee spent the fall semester at the Institute of Politics focusing on a topic of great interest to him — that of political lying. In Nov- ember, Bradlee spoke with the Bulletin.

What in particular interests you about lying?
For many years I’ve been fixated on lying in politics. I’ve noticed an increase in lying and a decrease in the cost that people pay for lying. People are scared of the word. People know that it’s a loaded word. Therefore they avoid using it. But as a result, they don’t make the point often enough.

What in your judgment have been some of the most serious lies told to the American public?
The boldest, most recent presidential lie was probably about Monica Lewinsky. Everybody knew that was a lie. You just looked at Clinton’s face and you knew. It’s going to prevent Bill Clinton from assuming a role in history that otherwise he would have gotten, because he was a hell of a good president. Lyndon Johnson’s lies about Vietnam — now those were really serious. Those were the ones with the greatest consequences that I can think of. By finding a justification for the American commitment to Vietnam based on a lie, 58,000 Americans died, and God knows how many hundreds of thousands of Asians.

And Watergate?
Nobody died in Watergate. Obviously I was extremely involved in that and proud of my involvement, but it was the dirty tricks and the philosophy of the dirty tricks more than the lying. Certainly Nixon lied like a trooper and so did [Charles] Colson, [H.R.] Haldeman, [John] Ehrlichman, and [John] Dean. They all did. But the increase in lying didn’t begin with Watergate. Watergate had a certain drama to it. It had a little bit of the lion being killed by the lamb. It had a couple of unknown young reporters and the brave owner. It had that drama along with it.

So when did lying become such a part of the political scene?
I’m beginning to think it started with World War II, because certainly until we entered World War II, there were a great many lies being told about Hitler and about what was going on in the world, especially in America. I consider this to be an American phenomenon.