Benjamin Bradlee, the vice president-at-large of The Washington Post, spoke to students and faculty on Dec. 1 about the political misinformation of the public and how reporters cover it. The investigative journalism program sponsored his visit, which brought an audience of approximately 80.As executive editor of The Post during President Richard Nixon's administration, Bradlee oversaw the coverage and development of the Watergate scandal, which led to Nixon's resignation. A graduate of Harvard College, Bradlee is also currently a Joint Fellow at Harvard's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.

Bradlee is the author of Conversations with Kennedy and his memoir, A Good Life: Newspapering and Other Adventures.

Bradlee addressed the issue of lying as one about which he is particularly interested because of its power to hide the real news from the public.

"I think I'm just interested in explaining [the theme of lying], why people do it and the ease with which people do it," Bradlee said. "And especially the Business section today has more crime in it than the Metro section, but less violent."

Bradlee mentioned the change in image that The Washington Post received after uncovering Watergate.

"The Post got such a boost," Bradlee said. "We got the most circulation, we got ads in and the rest of journalists would say 'I'll be damned if we got the same start as The Post did.' "

Moderated by Florence Graves, the discussion opened and closed with clips from Alan Pakula's film All the President's Men, in which Jason Robards, who played Bradlee, portrayed events that Bradlee described in his lecture.

"I thought the movie was pretty good," Bradlee said. "Jason Robards had been in a terrible automobile accident and that's why he had that mustache. Also, I never wore a bowtie."

He also spoke about several events that stood out for him during and after the experience.

"One of my favorite memories of Watergate is of [Bob] Woodward calling that number and asking Mr. Hunt if he's there and a man answered, saying 'He's not here but here's another number,' and [Woodward] called and said 'Mr. Hunt, this is Bob Woodward of The Washington Post and I was wondering why your name appeared in a black book,' " Bradlee said. "And I remember him saying 'Oh my God,' and this was several days after we broke it."

Bradlee said that he chose Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who were then junior reporters, from the moment they began getting stories that turned out to be right.

"This dropped off the horizon and Woodward and Bernstein couldn't find anything," Bradlee said.

Bradlee also said that the current administration, much like that of Nixon, lies to the public, so what it releases to the public must be investigated.

"I'm not awfully political, despite what you think...I want to find out what's going on and this administration restricts a lot of that information," Bradlee said. "As long as our journalistic tradition starts by telling what happened yesterday, your first page might be a lie."

He added that the current context of governmental lying-in terms of the war on terrorism-is particularly dangerous because of how many people rely on the government for information.

"It's very hard when somebody's lying to you, especially with something with which you have developed an amount of trust," Bradlee said. "You got to tell [the president] first that he's lying and convince him. But I think the amount of self-deception going on in Washington is at its all-time high.