Power, privilege, and the Post

by Carol Felsenthal

Katharine Graham has been called the most powerful woman in the world, and she is perhaps one of the richest. In the wake of her decision to print the Pentagon Papers, she became the most famous newspaper publisher in America. During the Watergate investigation, Richard Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell, threatened, "Katie Graham is gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer if that's published." She didn't flinch and became, to many, a figure of awe. "There's one word that brings us all together here tonight," Art Buchwald announced at her seventieth birthday party in 1987, "and that word is f̀ear.'" The scores of luminaries gathered for the event - senators, CEOs, Supreme Court justices, columnists, movie stars, Cabinet secretaries, even the president of the United States - laughed appreciatively.^ The laughter of some was tinged with amazement, for they knew her when her husband, Philip Graham - Harvard Law graduate, clerk to Justice Felix Frankfurter, pal of JFK and LBJ, a