Bradlee was the second of three children; his siblings were older brother Frederick, a writer and Broadway stage actor,[2] and younger sister Constance.

[3] They learned French from governesses, took piano and riding lessons, and went to the symphony and the opera;[4] but the stock market crash of 1929 cost Bradlee's father his job, and he took on whatever work he could find to support his family, including selling deodorants and molybdenum mining stock "for companies founded and financed by some of his rich pals", according to his son Ben Bradlee.

His father's career opportunities improved later, serving as a financial consultant to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and being appointed to the Massachusetts State Parole Board in 1945, of which he was president for ten years until his retirement in 1957.

[4] Like many of his classmates, Bradlee anticipated the United States would eventually enter World War II and enrolled in the Naval ROTC at Harvard.

[3] The paper struggled to develop advertising revenue and circulation for two years, but was finally sold to the Manchester Union-Leader, the competing daily newspaper.

[11] One year later, Bradlee backed reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein as they probed the break-in at the Democratic National Committee Headquarters in the Watergate Hotel.

[11] According to Bradlee: You had a lot of Cuban or Spanish-speaking guys in masks and rubber gloves, with walkie-talkies, arrested in the Democratic National Committee Headquarters at 2 in the morning.

The follow-up story was based primarily on their arraignment in court, and it was based on information given our police reporter, Al Lewis, by the cops, showing them an address book that one of the burglars had in his pocket, and in the address book was the name 'Hunt,' H-u-n-t, and the phone number was the White House phone number, which Al Lewis and every reporter worth his salt knew.

[12]Ensuing investigations of suspected cover-ups led inexorably to congressional committees, conflicting testimonies, and ultimately to the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974.

[13] In 1981, Post reporter Janet Cooke won a Pulitzer Prize for "Jimmy's World", a profile of an eight-year-old heroin addict.

After questions about the story's veracity arose, Bradlee (along with publisher Donald Graham) ordered a "full disclosure" investigation to ascertain the truth.

[15] Bradlee personally apologized to Mayor Marion Barry[16] and the chief of police of Washington, D.C., for the Post's fictitious article.

Bradlee retired as the executive editor of The Washington Post in September 1991 but continued to serve as vice president at large until his death.

In 1991, he was persuaded by then–governor of Maryland William Donald Schaefer to accept the chairmanship of the Historic St. Mary's City Commission and continued in that position through 2003.

He also served for many years as a member of the board of trustees at St. Mary's College of Maryland,[1] and endowed the Benjamin C. Bradlee Annual Lecture in Journalism there.

His message: Lying in Washington, whether in the White House or the Congress, is wrong, immoral, tearing at the fiber of our national instincts and institutions — and must stop.

In recognition of his work as editor of The Washington Post, Bradlee won the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism in 1998.

[20] In the fall of 2005, Jim Lehrer interviewed Bradlee for six hours on topics from the responsibilities of the press to Watergate to the Valerie Plame affair.

The interviews were edited for an hour-long documentary, Free Speech: Jim Lehrer and Ben Bradlee, which premiered on PBS on June 19, 2006.