Former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, who oversaw reporting on the Watergate scandal that brought down former US President Richard Nixon, died last night.
The newspaper, on its website, hailed Mr Bradlee for guiding "The Post's transformation into one of the world's leading newspapers".
Donald E Graham, who served as publisher of the Post and Mr Bradlee's boss, said: "Ben Bradlee was the best American newspaper editor of his time and had the greatest impact on his newspaper of any modern editor."
Mr Bradlee died of natural causes at his Washington home. He was 93.
It was Mr Graham's mother, Katharine Graham, who was publisher of the newspaper when Mr Bradlee charged young reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein with investigating the Watergate burglary.
The reporting uncovered a vast scheme of surveillance and dirty tricks.
The resulting coverage led to the impeachment and resignation of Nixon in 1974, and the prosecution of dozens of administration officials.
During Mr Bradlee's leadership from 1968 to 1991, the Post, which won a Pulitzer Prize for its Watergate stories, also played a role in the successful legal challenge to the publication of the Pentagon Papers revealing the political manoeuvres leading up to the Vietnam War.
As executive editor from 1968 until 1991, Mr Bradlee became one of the most important figures in Washington, as well as part of journalism history, while transforming the newspaper from a staid morning daily into one of the most dynamic and respected publications in the US.
Mr Bradlee gave the two journalists licence to pursue the scandal and its cover-up vigorously, approving their use of the unidentified "Deep Throat" source, and the newspaper published about 400 articles about Watergate over 28 months.
The Post's coverage - along with the book and movie about it, 'All the President's Men' - inspired a generation of investigative reporters in the US and beyond.
"I think the great lesson of Watergate was probably the stick-tuitiveness of the Post," Mr Bradlee once told the American Journalism Review.
"The fact that we hunkered down and backed the right horse. I think that was a wonderful lesson for publishers, too."
Ben Bradlee, who died today at 93, was the most celebrated newspaper editor of his era http://t.co/3foahLTawo pic.twitter.com/eOX4RjsSsf
— Washington Post (@washingtonpost) October 22, 2014
Upsetting presidents was Mr Bradlee's stock-in-trade. In 1972, the Post joined the New York Times in publishing stories based on the Pentagon Papers, a secret government account of Vietnam War decisions, despite heavy legal pressure.
The Post also uncovered details of the Iran-Contra scandal that rocked Ronald Reagan's White House.
"I think this shows the (adversarial free-press) system works," Mr Bradlee said. "It's a wonderful control on governments that are not all that careful on policing themselves."
He did have a close friendship with one president, John F Kennedy, who had been his neighbour in Washington's Georgetown district when Mr Bradlee was a Newsweek correspondent.
Today's @washingtonpost front page #BenBradlee...The father of gold standard journalism pic.twitter.com/4Q31MUJR9Z
— Caitriona Perry (@CaitrionaPerry) October 22, 2014In 1975, he wrote a book titled 'Conversations With Kennedy'.
Mr Bradlee said he never knew about such Kennedy peccadilloes as an affair the president had with Judith Exner, a woman said to have had organised crime connections.
He said later that if he had found out, he would have been forced to expose that liaison and probably destroy his friendship with Kennedy.
Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee was born in Boston on 26 August 1921 to an aristocratic family.
He attended Harvard and served on a Navy destroyer in the Pacific during World War II before starting a New Hampshire newspaper in 1946.
His career at the Washington Post began in 1948 as a police reporter. He quit to become a press attaché at the US Embassy in Paris, then Newsweek magazine's Paris correspondent and its Washington bureau chief.
He returned to the Post, was named managing editor in 1965 and became executive editor in 1968, holding the job until his 1991 retirement.
Mr Bradlee was married three times, most recently in 1978 to Sally Quinn, then the Post's top features writer. He had one son, Benjamin, by his first marriage; a son and daughter, Dominic and Marina, by his second; and a son, Quinn, by his third.
