Ben Bradlee Quotes
We were right about the slush fund. But Sloan did not testify about it to the Grand Jury.
Woodward, Bob, and Carl Bernstein. All the President's Men. Simon & Schuster, 1974.
He was addressing the technique of the Special Prosecutor who had been appointed to investigate the relationship between the Donald Trump presidentical campaign and the Russian interference with the 2016 Presidential Campaign
In many countries throughout the world, corruption is rampant and any contractor to the government has to pay and often offers to pay the appropriate government officials. In the most corrupt countries like Nigeria, corruption is rife in all levels of government but is technically illegal. While in Saudi Arabia, the government has institutionalized the bribery and corruption but limited the amount to 6 percent. Corruption of this type is not only existent on government contracts but often operates for private money where government approval must be obtained. World Bank contracts for example are notorious for the percentage that must be paid to government officials despite the fact that the World Bank officially claims to be against corruption.
It was very common to have tax collectors take a percentage of their collections as a commission and to be able to appoint sub tax collectors who also took commissions. On top of that, most tax collectors underreported the amount that they collected and pocketed the difference. At the time, Spain was worse than most Christian nations.
Benjamin Crowninshield Bradlee was one of the most prominent journalists of post-World War II United States, serving first as managing editor, then as executive editor at The Washington Post, from 1965 to 1991. He became a public figure when he joined The New York Times in publishing the Pentagon Papers and gave the go-ahead for the paper's extensive coverage of the Watergate scandal. He was also criticized for editorial lapses when the Post had to return a Pulitzer Prize in 1981 after it discovered its award-winning story was false.
