Nixon aide Colson said The Post needed to curry favor with administration

Charles Colson, special counsel to President Richard M. Nixon, suggested in January 1973 that The Washington Post fire Executive Editor Ben Bradlee, pull Watergate stories off the front page or produce "obviously friendly editorials" on the Vietnam War as ways to prove it wanted to end its warfare with the White House, according to a document released Monday by the Nixon Presidential Library. The Jan. 15, 1973, "eyes only" memo for the file is among 280,000 pages of documents the Nixon Library made public. It recorded a conversation Colson had had three days earlier with Robert F. Ellsworth, a former congressman and at the time a partner in Lazard Freres, a New York investment-banking firm. The firm had helped The Washington Post Co. go public through a stock offering in 1971. Colson wrote that the bankers were concerned about the company's financial future, given its newspaper's contentious relationship with the White House.