Katharine Graham (June 16, 1917 – July 17, 2001) was the head of The Washington Post newspaper for more than two decades, overseeing its most famous period, the Watergate coverage that helped bring down President Richard Nixon. She has been widely described as one of the most powerful American women of the 20th century.

Graham was the subject of one of the most famous threats in American journalism history. It occurred in 1972, when Nixon's Attorney General, John Mitchell, warned reporter Carl Bernstein about a forthcoming article: "Katie Graham's gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer if that's published."

Graham's father, Eugene Meyer, was a millionaire financier and government official who bought The Washington Post in 1933 at a bankruptcy auction. She began working for the Post five years later but left in 1945 to raise a family. Her husband, Philip Graham , became publisher of the Post, but she abruptly had to take it over after his suicide in 1963. Despite having little management experience, she was publisher of the newspaper from 1969 to 1979, and chairman of the board from 1973 to 1991. Her son, Donald Graham, was publisher from 1979 to 2000.

Graham ran The Washington Post Company, a media conglomerate which owns the Post and several other media companies, including Newsweek magazine.

In 1997, Graham published her memoirs, Personal History. The book, praised for its honest portrayal of Philip Graham's mental illness as well as her struggles to cope in a male-dominated business world, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998.

She was a sister-in-law to U.S. Senator Bob Graham.

Should the general public be informed?

Despite its Watergate work and publication of the "Pentagon Papers" that damaged the credibility the Nixon administration, the Post often followed an establishment line, thanks to the close contacts the Grahams had with the nation's elites. In 1988, Graham gave a speech at the CIA's Langley, Virginia headquarters, and told agency leaders:

We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows. (source: Regardie's Magazine1/90) [1]