Most Dangerous Editor-in-Chief

Author: Ben Bradlee
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-07-01
Features: That was October 2, 1940, a crisp autumn day with gentle breezes. The story takes place in a Victorian-style house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, next to Harvard Square. The living room was spacious but cluttered, now converted into an office. A sign hung at the entrance, reading "Adult Development Research Project," funded by the Grant Corporation. The Grant Corporation was a giant in the U.S. retail industry, and the project was implemented by the Harvard University Health Service. Its subjects were some "normal" young men. I really wonder what they meant by "normal," as most research at the time focused on "abnormal" phenomena. Arie Bock was the director of the Grant Research Center since its establishment. He firmly believed that "some people could handle life better than others," and the purpose of this research was to uncover the potential hidden in these "superior" individuals. We, the subjects of the experiment, were like "guinea pigs" in a laboratory—268 Harvard freshmen. I was one of them. We studied at Harvard, and in the eyes of others, we seemed "more or less capable of future career success." The researchers mainly included internists, psychiatrists, anthropologists, psychometricians, social workers, as well as some physiologists, biologists, and chemists. That afternoon, I was a sophomore, barely 19 years old, and had my first sexual experience. The Great Depression and polio had cast a shadow over my life; otherwise, even if my life wasn't particularly exciting, it would at least have been satisfying. At the time, everyone was focused on the progress of the European theater in World War II. In Britain, the Chamberlain regime had collapsed, replaced by the Churchill government. Around 350,000 British soldiers had hastily evacuated Dunkirk in small boats. President Franklin D. Roosevelt made a decisive decision to donate 50 American-made four-pinnacled destroyers to Britain. President Roosevelt himself was also about to face another round of U.S. presidential elections and would make history by becoming the third president to occupy the White House. Baseball star Joe DiMaggio was expected to achieve a 35% batting average and help his team win the American League pennant. At the time, gasoline cost 15 cents per gallon. A luxury car cost about $1,400. Ronald Reagan was cast in the role of "She Couldn't Say No," with his co-star being Rosemary Lane. The Grant Corporation's social worker later described me as: a typical white Anglo-Saxon Protestant descendant, with an annual family income of $10,000 (with $5,000 from my father's earnings and another $5,000 from my mother's clothing store), with tuition paid by my grandfather, a lawyer in New York. The social worker also described my parents as follows: "Father was hardworking and diligent