JIM LEHRER: Another major journalism event for Bradlee was his friendship with John F. Kennedy. Bradlee was born in Boston 84 years ago to well to do parents, who lost it all during the depression. He went to private school, then Harvard.

Upon graduation, he joined the Navy and served aboard destroyers in World War Two. His early career took him to Paris and when he returned home to Washington in 1958 to work for Newsweek Magazine, it was then that he had a chance meeting with his neighbor, Senator John F. Kennedy.

JIM LEHRER: John F. Kennedy?

BEN BRADLEE: Yep.

JIM LEHRER: What, what was your relationship with him? You liked him, right?

BEN BRADLEE: Yes, I did like him a lot. Kennedy bought a house that was five houses down from me on the same block. And--

JIM LEHRER: Here in Washington?

BEN BRADLEE: Here in Washington, on N Street and I was out, you know, pushing a baby carriage and damned if we didn't pass each other and he was pushing a baby carriage. And I had met him once before and we said hello and he said, you know, come back and have an ice tea or something like that in the afternoon. We did and we became friends.

He was running for president then already in 1958, although there was no big deal about it. And I'm not sure I even knew it. And I got assigned by Newsweek to cover him as a political candidate. And so, I got to know him. I really got to know him pretty well. You never know a political or politician.

JIM LEHRER: Was it good company? Was it fun to be--

BEN BRADLEE: Oh, it was fun. He had a sense of youth and vitality that is so contagious and was so different. I'd never met-- I didn't know all that many politicians, but I didn't know many young ones. And he was in his early 40s at that time. You remember, he was--you asked him his age. He'd say I'm 43 and a half and nobody puts the half in after you're five years old.

JIM LEHRER: Right, right. Did you ever--professionally, did you ever run stories by him or--

BEN BRADLEE: No, here's what--quite soon after it became obvious that we were going to see each other and going to see each other a good deal and that I was interested in him as a journalist more than as a friend, that we decided that--or he decided, I don't know who decided-- that we had to have some ground rules; that if he wanted--and the ground rule we settled on was that, if he wanted something off the record, he had to tell me about it and he couldn't do it afterwards.

JIM LEHRER: Otherwise, he had to assume that everything he said to you was on the record because he was talking to a reporter?

BEN BRADLEE: Yeah, yeah. I mean, since I wasn't taking notes and it wasn't being recorded, my skills at remembering were probably limited even then.

JIM LEHRER: Do you think you did anything wrong in getting so close to John F. Kennedy?

BEN BRADLEE: No. I mean, well, because it got me a lot of good stories and I understood that administration. I knew what was going on.

JIM LEHRER: Did there ever come a time, Ben-- this is a difficult question. But did there ever come a time that you knew something or had an angle on a story involving Kennedy where you pulled a punch--

BEN BRADLEE: No.

JIM LEHRER: --because he was your friend?

BEN BRADLEE: I didn't pull a punch. Sometimes he said, in conversation, you can't use this before he told me. And I either told him--I remember once saying, "Well, don't tell me then if I can't use it, because I'm real close to getting it."

JIM LEHRER: It's not just you or John F. Kennedy or whatever. It's the whole idea of reporters socializing with the people--you know, socializing at night with the people they then go cover the next morning. And the question in some of the public's mind is, hey, wait a minute. Give me a break. How can you do that?

BEN BRADLEE: Well, it's a dilemma that newspaper people face, because when you have an important source, whether he's the president of a company or the president or if he just was the witness at a, at a fire, you got to get close to him because--or he won't talk to you. You've got to make him want to talk to you.

And so, on a breaking news story, that's not as important as it is as if you're covering the mayor's office or something like that. You got to get to know the mayor. If you get to know the mayor, you got to get to know him well. And if you get to know him well, you begin to develop a relationship with him. Sometimes it's hate. You can't stand the son of a gun and he can't stand you. That's trouble. Sometimes, I mean, there have been cases where those relationships have blossomed into love affairs. Sometimes it's just you become pals.

JFK's Relationships
JIM LEHRER: You said many times that John F. Kennedy was your friend. You spent a lot of time with him, but you were unaware of his womanizing.

BEN BRADLEE: Yeah, well--

JIM LEHRER: And people are skeptical about that, as you know.

BEN BRADLEE: Oh, tell me about it. They're always--

JIM LEHRER: Yeah, they won't believe it.

BEN BRADLEE: They're more than skeptical. They don't believe it.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah.

BEN BRADLEE: Well, here's, here's what I'm telling you the truth is. The times that I saw him were overwhelmingly with his wife and with my wife. So, you can just imagine, a little, cozy foursome around the table. You're not going to talk about maybe girlfriends.

JIM LEHRER: Did you hear the gossip at the time?

BEN BRADLEE: I heard--you know, my father, I can remember my dad saying, isn't he a fearful girler, my dad asked me.

JIM LEHRER: Fearful girler?

BEN BRADLEE: Girler, that's an old-fashioned word.

JIM LEHRER: Direct question: If you had known about it at the time, would you have done a story?

BEN BRADLEE: I suppose if I knew that he had made one mistake, I doubt if I would have and nobody knew about it, didn't create any fuss, I probably wouldn't. But if--you know, he had such an image as the head of this charming, totally American, beautiful family. Children were, you know--

JIM LEHRER: It would not have met the journalistic test as a president running around on his wife, the charmed family, it wouldn't have met the, hey, that's a story?

BEN BRADLEE: I guess, especially because they, they were making such a thing about how--what a perfect family they were.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah.

BEN BRADLEE: I think I probably would have.

JIM LEHRER: But in the present climate, some reporter knew that, that would be on the front page of every newspaper in America.

BEN BRADLEE: Try it and it certainly would, yeah. I think things have changed.

JIM LEHRER: Is that for the better or for the worse?

BEN BRADLEE: Well, I'm a maximum information man myself, but I sure as hell would have liked to have known about it.

JIM LEHRER: Like to have known about Kennedy, you mean?

BEN BRADLEE: Yeah and made the decision and then, at least, your, you're straight with yourself. You're not, you're not making mistakes by mistake. You're doing something on purpose.

JIM LEHRER: Well, contrast that with what happened to Bill Clinton.

BEN BRADLEE: Well, I mean, that was pretty public. There was no hiding of that. I mean, when you're talking about dresses and spots and all that stuff and--especially when, when--I mean, John Kennedy didn't, to my knowledge, look the world in the face and say, I did not have sexual relations with that woman.

JIM LEHRER: And that, that makes a difference?

BEN BRADLEE: A lie makes a difference.

JIM LEHRER: A lie makes a difference?

BEN BRADLEE: I mean, lies are good for reporters. If a reporter knows somebody is lying, it really helps them understand the that.

JIM LEHRER: It's the old more people go to jail for perjury than they do for what they lied about.

BEN BRADLEE: Yeah.

JIM LEHRER: The same thing, you mean?

BEN BRADLEE: The journalists, too. And this--I mean, if a person is [guilty of] perjury and lying, you know he's got something to cover up.