Subject: Katie Graham and the Pentagon Papers
Katie owned the WaPo during the era of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate…..

During a dinner party at the same Georgetown mansion, with the very survival of her newspaper at stake — the government wielded enormous economic power over the media, particularly through licensing of their broadcast affiliates — Mrs. Graham considered a few moments, then gave the order in five two-word bites: “Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. Let’s go. Let’s publish.” When her lawyers warned her that the government might come after the editors with subpoenas for the papers, and they might face prison for refusing to cough them up, she ordered that the documents be delivered to her house, so she and she alone would be the one to defy the subpoena. Let them put an old grandmother in jail, she said.

A half decade later, in the midst of the Watergate mess, this happened: Awakened from a drunken sleep by Carl Bernstein, John Mitchell, the former attorney general of the United States, listened to Bernstein read the lede of yet another devastating story that would appear in the next day’s Post. “JEEESUS!” Mitchell screamed. “Katie Graham is gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer if that’s published.” The story was published, of course, and for years afterward, Mrs. Graham wore a specially-made necklace with two charms on it: A tit and a wringer.

My God, Katharine Graham had one hell of a pair of ovaries.
On July 17, 2001, when Mrs. Graham died after a fall on the street, her employees walked the halls of the Washington Post building, tearful.

Jeff Bezos has earned billions in his life, but he will never earn that.

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