Watergate scandal
The Watergate complex in 2006
Events
List Presidency of Richard Nixon Timeline Nixon White House tapes Operation Sandwedge Operation Gemstone 1972 presidential election "Saturday Night Massacre" Impeachment process against Richard Nixon United States v. Nixon Resignation speech Inauguration of Gerald Ford
People
Watergate burglars Bernard Barker Virgilio Gonzalez Eugenio Martínez James W. McCord Jr. Frank Sturgis
Groups Master list of Nixon's political opponents Nixon's Enemies List Watergate Babies Watergate Seven White House Plumbers
CRP Committee for the Re-Election of the President (CRP) Fred LaRue Jeb Stuart Magruder Robert Mardian John N. Mitchell Kenneth Parkinson Hugh W. Sloan Jr. Maurice Stans
White House Richard Nixon Alexander Butterfield Charles Colson John Dean John Ehrlichman Gerald Ford H. R. Haldeman E. Howard Hunt Egil Krogh G. Gordon Liddy Gordon C. Strachan Rose Mary Woods
Judiciary Archibald Cox Leon Jaworski John Sirica
Journalists Carl Bernstein Bob Woodward Barry Sussman Harry M. Rosenfeld Howard Simons Ben Bradlee Katharine Graham Lesley Stahl The Washington Post
Intelligence community Mark Felt ("Deep Throat") L. Patrick Gray Richard Helms James R. Schlesinger
Congress Howard Baker Sam Ervin Peter W. Rodino U.S. Senate Watergate Committee Impeachment process
Related Frank Wills (security guard) James F. Neal (prosecutor) All the President's Men (book, film) The Final Days (book, film) Blind Ambition (miniseries) Dick (1999 film) Mark Felt: The Man who Brought Down the White House (2017 film) Watergate (2019 board game) Slow Burn (2020 series) Gaslit (2022 series) White House Plumbers (2023 miniseries)
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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.

Simons was born to a Jewish family^[1] and raised in 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.

In 1966, he received the Raymond Clapper Memorial Award for his Washington reporting.^[2]

According to Carol Felsenthal of Politico Magazine, Simons took the first phone call, on June 18, 1972, from Democratic National Committee general counsel Joseph Califano Jr., about a break-in, the night before, at DNC headquarters at the Watergate complex. Simons took charge and with help from fellow editors Barry Sussman and Harry Rosenfeld, guided Woodward and Bernstein, and championed the young reporters for what became a national story.^[3]

Simons is credited with dubbing Mark Felt, their well-placed source, "Deep Throat," in reference to the pornographic 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.

Simons was portrayed by Martin Balsam in All the President's Men, the 1976 film based on Bernstein and Woodward's 1974 book of the same name, depicting the Post's investigation of Watergate. He was later played by David Cross in the 2017 film The Post.

Simons left The Post for a position as Curator at The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University in 1984.

Simons authored Jewish Times: Voices of the American Jewish Experience, (Houghton-Mifflin, 1988), and Simons' List Book (1977). He edited two books with Joseph A. Califano, Jr., The Media and the Law and The Media and Business, and in 1986 wrote a spy novel with Haynes Johnson called The Landing.

A well-known quotation attributed to Simons:

"People who are funny and smart and return phone calls get much better press than people who are just funny and smart."

He stepped down from the Nieman position on May 25, 1989, on medical leave, and succumbed to pancreatic cancer three weeks later, aged 60.

A scholarship named after him assists minority students aspiring in journalism (see [1] Archived 2005-04-07 at the Wayback Machine).

• Jones, Alex S. (June 14, 1989). "Howard Simons Dies at Age 60, an Ex-Editor at Washington Post". The New York Times.