Next Thursday we’ll pass a historical milestone that I suspect will largely go unnoticed: the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in. On June 16, 1972, four men from Miami Beach Florida checked into the Watergate Hotel in Washington D.C. Bernard Barker and Eugenio Martinez booked Room 214, and Virgilio Gonzalez and Frank Sturgis booked Room 314. They were soon joined by E. Howard Hunt, an ex-CIA agent who claimed to be personally responsible for the death of Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara, G. Gordon Liddy, the “fixer” and ex-FBI man gone rogue then working in “political intel,” and James McCord, a former CIA officer working full-time for President Richard Nixon’s Committee for the Re-election of the President, forever known by the prophetic acronym of CREEP. That night the seven men dined on lobster on the Terrace Restaurant of the Watergate Hotel, overlooking the Potomac River, and formulated a plan.
Sometime after midnight on Saturday, June 17, 1972, Watergate Complex security guard Frank Wills discovered a piece of tape covering the latches on some of the complex’s doors leading from the underground parking garage to several offices. The tape allowed the doors to close but remain unlocked. He removed the tape, believing it was nothing. When he returned a short time later and discovered that someone had retaped the locks, he called the police. An unmarked police cruiser arrived carrying three plainclothes officers (Sgt. Paul W. Leeper, Officer John B. Barrett, and Officer Carl M. Shoffler) working the overnight “bum squad.” The unlikely-looking trio of officers was dressed undercover as hippies on the lookout for drug deals and other street crimes.
Alfred C. Baldwin III, the “spotter” for this motley crew of miscreant oddballs, was perched in the window of a room at the Howard Johnson’s hotel across the street, armed with binoculars and a walkie talkie to warn the burglars if necessary. Former FBI agent Baldwin, then McCord’s ally at CREEP, became distracted while watching the film Attack of the Puppet People on TV and failed to observe the arrival of the plainclothes officers in front of the Watergate building. By the time he witnessed the undercover cops going room to room investigating the DNC’s sixth-floor suite of 29 offices, it was too late. The police apprehended five men (the Miami four plus McCord), dressed in business suits and wearing surgical gloves. They arrested them for breaking into the offices of the Democratic National Committee, housed in the same complex as the hotel. They were charged with burglary and attempted interception of telephone and other communications. The Washington Post reported that “police found lock-picks and door jimmies, almost $2,300 in cash, most of it in $100 bills with the sequential serial numbers in sequence … a short wave receiver that could pick up police calls, 40 rolls of unexposed film, two 35 millimeter cameras and three pen-sized tear gas guns.”
These would-be 007’s were trying to bug the office of Lawrence O’Brien, the Democratic National Chairman and one of Nixon’s most vocal critics, in hopes of gathering dirt they could use in the upcoming presidential campaign. Thanks to the dogged pursuit by two of this writer’s personal heroes, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post, what followed exposed the most infamous political cover-up in the history of the United States. In the months and years that followed, the scandal unraveled, ultimately leading to the resignation of President Richard Nixon on August 9. 1974. Most of the hapless characters in the scandal were sent to jail, their careers forever ruined. But what about the Watergate itself?
Turns out, the Watergate was no stranger to a scandal even before Nixon’s CREEPS made it famous. The Watergate complex was built between 1963 and 1971. When the plans by Italian architect Luigi Moretti were first revealed, they sparked widespread concern about how its modernist, curving towers would reflect on the neo-classical architecture of America’s capital. One critic argued the building’s design in this city of magnificent spaces would be like “inviting a stripper to your grandmother’s funeral.” However, when the complex was finished it quickly became one of the most sought-after addresses in the capital. In 1966 the New York Times called it an “address of status” and visits from mega-stars like John Wayne and Elizabeth Taylor helped cement its affluent reputation.
The three Watergate apartment buildings featured 600 residential units and was just a 30-minute walk from the White House. It proved popular with members of the Nixon administration. Attorney General John Mitchell, who would later serve 19 months in prison for his part in the scandal, lived in the complex with his wife Martha. Watergate players Maurice Stans and Rose Mary Woods also lived at the Watergate as did Bob and Elizabeth Dole, Plácido Domingo, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Condoleezza Rice, Caspar Weinberger, Ben Stein, and the central subject in another presidential scandal, Monica Lewinsky, who stayed briefly at her mother’s apartment in the complex. So many members of the Nixon administration settled there that the D.C., press nicknamed it the “Republican Bastille.” In the 1980s, the complex became known as the “White House West” due to the large number of Reagan administration officials living there. In later years, fashion boutiques and jewelers including Gucci and Yves St. Laurent opened outlets in the Watergate shops.
Journalists Woodward and Bernstein described the hotel as “opulent” and “as Republican as it gets” in their book All the President’s Men. They wrote that with its $100,000 co-op apartments and garish design, it had “become the symbol of the ruling class in Richard Nixon’s Washington.” All things considered, it seems odd that the Democratic National Committee ever ended up in such a glamorized complex. Owing to its GOP bulwark status, in 1970, the Watergate was the site of a protest by some 1,000 anti-Nixon demonstrators. In the weeks prior to the jury verdict in the trial of the Chicago Seven, political activists began planning (and subsequently advertising) that a protest would occur at the home of U.S. Attorney General John N. Mitchell (then living in the Watergate East). The verdict was delivered on February 18, 1970, determining that all the defendants were not guilty of conspiracy but five were found guilty of incitement to riot. On February 19, protestors gathered in front of the Watergate East and attempted to enter the building.
Several hundred police, bused in to prevent the demonstration, engaged in street fighting with protestors, forcing them to retreat. Police eventually launched several tear gas canisters to disperse the crowd. Riot police pushed the mob back to nearby George Washington University where more than 145 protesters were arrested. The tenants of the Watergate “cheered and toasted” from their balconies and open windows as the protestors were subdued. Although a second protest was expected the following day, it never emerged and police spent the day drinking coffee and eating cookies and pastries baked at the Watergate East’s pastry shop.
The break-in at the Democratic National Headquarters was not the first break-in at the Watergate. A break-in happened years before Nixon’s dirty tricks squad shot to prominence but does share a remarkable connection with Tricky Dicky. That first break-in was the burglary of a residential unit in 1969. The victim was Rose Mary Woods, President Nixon’s personal secretary. The burglars took jewelry and some personal items. Woods would later be accused of erasing 18 1/2 minutes from President Nixon’s secret Oval Office audio taping system — specifically, the tape from June 20, 1972, that proved central to the Watergate scandal. After occupying the space since the building opened in 1967, the DNC relocated to new offices just weeks after the break-in by Nixon’s cronies. From that time forward, the name “Watergate” and the suffix “-gate” have become synonymous with controversial topics and scandals in the United States.
And just where did that eponymous name Watergate originate? “Watergate” likely derives from its placement near the eastern terminus of the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, which operated from 1831 to 1924. In his 2009 book Presidential Power on Trial: From Watergate to All the President’s Men, author William Noble claimed that the Watergate “got its name from overlooking the ‘gate’ that regulated the flow of water from the Potomac River into the Tidal Basin at flood tide.” The remains of the gravity dam spanning Rock Creek are still at the site. However, that gate (near the Jefferson Memorial) is about 1.5 miles downriver from the Watergate complex. In 2004, Washington Post writer John Kelly said the name came from the “Water Steps” or “Water Gate,” the set of ceremonial stairs west of the Lincoln Memorial that led down to the Potomac.
Others believe the name came from the Water Gate Inn, a Pennsylvania Dutch family restaurant, which operated on the site from 1942 to 1966. In 1941 Marjory Hendricks (1896-1978) bought the former Riverside Riding Academy at 2700 F Street NW as the site for her new in-town eatery. The location was something of a gamble: back then the Foggy Bottom neighborhood was looked upon as a slum. Wartime rationing and shortages of materials delayed her opening until August 1942, after which it soon became a hit with local diners. According to the Historic Washington website, “The Inn’s menu featured traditional Dutch cooking, such as the unpronounceable ‘Sigh Flaysch Rick Mays El mit Rode Graut’ (pork tenderloin cooked with red cabbage) or the popular ‘Shrimp Wiggle Esche Puddle’ (shrimp and peas in cream sauce). Other dishes included traditional pork-and-sauerkraut recipes, layered dishes called Gumbis (shredded cabbage with layers of fruit and/or meat), as well as new recipes inspired by traditional Pennsylvania Dutch techniques. One dish, Chicken Barbara (battered chicken breasts with cream sauce), was so successful that Hendricks trademarked the name. The dish, she claimed, was an impromptu concoction invented for a finicky customer and named after his girlfriend.”
In 1960 the restaurant was first threatened by plans for a new National Cultural Center, which would become the Kennedy Center. The restaurant stayed open until 1966, when Hendricks finally reached an agreement with the government on the sale of the property, reportedly for $650,000, significantly less than the $1 million she had hoped for. With bulldozers already rumbling all around it, the inn closed in May. “No more Dutch noodle soup, piping hot popovers with melting butter, rich Mennonite chicken, oven-baked loin of veal with Pennsylvania egg noodles, fresh yellow squash, bread-and-butter pickles, and apple-tart pies,” the Evening Star’s John Rosson lamented. Today, objects like ashtrays, menus, matchbooks, and placemats from the old Watergate Inn sell well (when they can be found) on eBay. Wait, you say, but what about relics from the Watergate Scandal and what became of that complex with the titular name?
Next week: Part 2 of the story of the Watergate Scandal
Al Hunter is the author of the “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Haunted Irvington” and “Indiana National Road” book series. His newest books are “Bumps in the Night. Stories from the Weekly View,” “Irvington Haunts. The Tour Guide,” and “The Mystery of the H.H. Holmes Collection.” Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
