Howard Simons

Howard Simons (June 3, 1929 - June 13, 1989) was the managing editor of the Washington Post at the time of the Watergate scandal, and later curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

According to his Washington Post obituary, Simons was a native of Albany, New York, and received a BA from Union College in Schenectady in 1951 and a master's degree a year later from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. After service in the Korean War, he became a science reporter in Washington for several news organizations, and joined The Post as a science writer in 1961. He became assistant managing editor in 1966 and managing editor in 1971.

According to a site on the Howard Simons Fellowship, "Simons received the first phone call in The Post newsroom with word of the Watergate break-in and pressed relentlessly on the paper's coverage of the story. He started at The Post as a science reporter but soon became an editor, nurturing talented young reporters such as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein." Simons is credited with dubbing their well-placed source "Deep Throat," in reference to the film of the same name.

When the time came, it was managing editor Howard Simons--not Ben Bradlee or other ranking editors--who made the crucial early decisions that led to the Washington Post's extraordinary coverage of the Watergate scandal, especially the decision to allow the metropolitan staff, which did not normally report on national politics, to pursue the story.

The Great Cover-Up by Barry Sussman, page 66.