The Watergate

by Joseph Rodota

There is no way of clarifying what had happened except by introducing, at this point, the name of a beautiful Oriental lady Anna Chan Chennault, the Chinese widow of World War II hero General Claire Chennault. Mrs. Chennault, an American citizen since 1950, comes of a long line that begins with Madame Chiang Kai-shek and runs through Madame Nhu, the Dragon Lady of South Vietnam, a line of Oriental ladies of high purpose and authoritarian manners whose pieties and iron righteousness have frequently outrun their brains and acknowledged beauty.

  Chennault, White wrote, had “undertaken most energetically” to sabotage the Paris Peace Talks. “In contact with the Formosan, the South Korean and the South Vietnamese governments, she had begun early, by cable and telephone, to mobilize their resistance” to the emerging settlement agreement—“apparently implying, as she went, that she spoke for the Nixon campaign.”

  Chennault, however, “neglected to take the most elementary precautions of an intriguer.” Her communications with Asia “had been tapped by the American government and brought directly to the perusal of President Johnson.” According to White:

  At first report, Nixon’s headquarters had begun to investigate the story, had discovered Mrs. Chennault’s activities, and were appalled. The fury and dismay of the Nixon staff were so intense they could not have been feigned. Their feeling on Monday morning before the election was simply that if they lost the election, Mrs. Chennault might have lost it for them. She had taken their name and authority in vain; if the Democrats now chose to air the story, no rebuttal by the Nixon camp could possibly be convincing. They were at the mercy of Humphrey’s goodwill.

  Chennault, who was on a business trip to Saigon when the excerpt appeared in print, refused to comment. “The public must wait for my book about Vietnam which is coming out soon,” she said. “If I tell all, I won’t find my way back to Washington. We can’t kiss and tell.”

  A Humphrey aide confirmed the former vice president knew of Chennault’s activities at the time. “We suspect that she was doing this as part of a plan with the encouragement or at least the knowledge of the Nixon people,” said Ted Van Dyk, chief policy advisor to Humphrey’s 1968 campaign. “The reason we did not use the issue in the closing days of the campaign was not because we thought Mr. Nixon was innocent. Rather we thought the American people shouldn’t learn that sort of thing about the man who might turn out to be their president.”

  A week later, at a press conference at the President Hotel in Saigon, Chennault said White’s account was “an insult to my intellect and the integrity of the South Vietnamese government.”

  “Mr. White is an excellent writer, but sometimes good writers make mistakes,” she said. “Some day when the time comes, all the facts will be made known.”

  Sarah McClendon, an independent reporter covering the White House, pounced on the story. In a scathing Washington Examiner profile titled “The Mysterious Anna Chennault,” McClendon wrote Chennault failed to register as a foreign agent with the justice department, as required by law; delivered paid speeches that amounted to little more than “unconnected phrases”; and overcharged “wealthy socialites” for Chinese art objects. “For whom does Anna Chennault work?” McClendon asked. “Where does she get all her money? And for what?”

  Chennault said either John Mitchell or Senator John Tower would defend her role in the 1968 campaign. But Tower offered only a terse “no comment.” Mitchell told McClendon he ran into Chennault only occasionally in the lobby of the Watergate. Martha Mitchell, however, directly contradicted her husband’s account. “She is down here a lot,” she said about their upstairs neighbor. “We visit and play bridge.”

  Chennault returned to the United States and released a statement that raised more questions than it answered. “I deny the accusations as false,” her statement read. “Presumptively, they are politically inspired to find a scapegoat for inaccurate political calculations in high places by those who presumably had all instrumentalities of intelligence at their disposal.” She said the allegations “had not the flimsiest evidence to sustain them except hearsay references to mysterious undisclosed wiretap evidence allegedly by sources close to the Democratic Party.” She challenged White to produce “any hard evidence” in his possession.

  Chennault confirmed only that she was a “consultant” to the “Key Issues Committee” chaired by Senator Tower, “and under his orders I acted along with others as ‘eyes and ears’ for information from which the Committee could form judgments as to the likelihood of a political resolution of the Vietnamese conflict prior to the election and report to him, among others, my every action and all my information. I am a soldier’s wife, and I try to act as a soldier should pursuant to his orders and in channels.” She referred all further inquiries to Senator Tower, whose staff told reporters he was unavailable for comment.

  On the heels of White’s book came a scathing exposé in Washingtonian by Judith Viorst titled “Anna Chennault: Washington’s Own Fortune Cookie.”

  “The many mysteries of Anna Chennault extend to her family life, her finances, and her backbreaking schedule,” Viorst wrote.

  A close friend said Chennault liked men more than children, and would be “delighted” to get her daughters “settled and out of her hair.”

  Chennault “adores being newsworthy,” Viorst wrote, “even if she has to prepare the press releases herself.”

  “Skeptics” in Washington “insist that Anna sometimes allows people to carry away the impression that she is far more of an international operator than, in truth, she is.”

  Some of Anna’s anonymous detractors described her as “a clever but not terribly extraordinary lady who has gone a long, long way on an exotic background, the Chennault legend, good looks, and a great flair for publicity.”

  Chennault, Viorst wrote, maintained a “feverish pace” because she needed the money.

  Not even Chennault’s marriage was spared:

  Anna, in rapturous prose . . . unfolds her story of the great romance between the innocent young reporter and the imposing general. There are, however, variations on this story which rather dim the luster of the love theme. In one, Anna is featured not as the innocent young reporter, but as an employee of Chinese intelligence in charge of keeping an eye on the general. In another, Anna’s attraction to Chennault is attributed less to passion than to the appeal of his exalted status in Asia. And while everyone agrees that Claire Chennault did indeed care for the lady, there are some doubts about the mushy dialogue attributed to him in A Thousand Springs. “He would never have talked that way,” insists an old friend of Chennault. “After I finished that book I went upstairs and threw up.”

  Robert Gray, a former Eisenhower aide, awkwardly compared his friend Anna Chennault to a geisha, “in the old, complimentary sense of the word—very solicitous, very gracious, and quite capable of providing anything from the right conversation to the right neck massage.”

  Tommy Corcoran also rose to her defense. “Anna’s power and influence are greater than any woman in Washington,” he said.

  But Viorst questioned how—and to what end—Chennault exercised this power. To her critics, Viorst wrote, Chennault was a woman “of fierce ambition, whose self-control and self-discipline have been enlisted in the cause of winning for herself attention, recognition and what in this city passes for glory.” Anna said her frenetic life—writing books, giving lectures, throwing parties and raising money for the Republican Party and the General Claire Lee Chennault Foundation, which brought medical and aviation students from non-Communist Asian countries to the United States to meet Americans and “absorb knowledge of . . . America’s free society”—was solely to help others. “I have no ambitions to join the Administration,” she told Viorst. “If I wanted a job, every Republican would have recommended me.”

  Peter Flanigan, Mitchell’s deputy at the campaign and now a White House aide known as Mr. Fixit, sent a memo to Mitchell regarding rumors Anna Chenault was “unhappy because she has not been recognized by the Admi
nistration.”

  “Since you had the liaison (if it could be called that) with this good lady,” Flanigan wrote, “I’d like your suggestions as to whether we should take some action to recognize her. If the answer is ‘yes’ should this be in terms of invitation to dinner at the White House or something more important?”

  On November 19, 1969, as the Apollo 12 astronauts prepared for their second walk on the moon, President Nixon hosted a state dinner honoring Prime Minister Eisaku Satō of Japan and his wife, Hiroko. Nixon toasted the character of the people of Japan and called the country “a modern miracle of economic progress.” Guests enjoyed dances from “Fancy Free,” a new ballet choreographed by Jerome Robbins, set to the music of Leonard Bernstein and performed by the American Ballet Theatre, the resident ballet company of the Kennedy Center. Guests at the dinner included Watergate residents Kathy and Maurice Stans, Patty and Bus Mosbacher, Johnson’s former defense secretary Robert S. McNamara—and Anna Chennault.

  According to White House chief of staff H. R. Haldeman’s notes, Nixon asked his aides to give Chennault a “high-level title”—but insisted it “can’t be in government.” More than a year into the Nixon administration, Anna Chennault finally got her presidential appointment. She was named to the Kennedy Center Advisory Committee on the Arts, a ceremonial body with 108 members.

  THE AUGUST 8, 1969, COVER OF LIFE SHOWED THE FOOTPRINTS of Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin on the surface of the moon. Inside, life at the Watergate was documented in an eight-page, full-color spread. Georgetown was “the right address” during the Kennedy era. Under Nixon, the “toothy structure” of the Watergate was the place to be.

  Photographs by Michael Rougier showed residents enjoying the amenities of the development some called “White House West.” Lifeguard Linda Fox watched over the swimming pool. Bus Mosbacher, Nixon’s chief of protocol, slipped into a limousine with his wife, Patty, and headed off to a dinner at the White House. Anna Chennault inspected place settings for “a 13-course dinner she prepared herself” and chatted with Senator Tower and Attorney General Mitchell. The Mitchells, reflected in a gold-framed mirror, chatted in their Wedgwood blue foyer. Transportation secretary John Volpe read briefing papers in his penthouse study. Walter Pforzheimer admired a signed photograph of Mata Hari. Kathy and Maurice Stans relaxed in their “Africana room,” decorated by trophies from nine safaris. Mary Brooks, director of the U.S. Mint, dictated a memo in her kitchen, which doubled as a home office. Martha Mitchell and Kathy Stans gossiped in the Watergate Salon, while Martha’s eight-year-old daughter, Marty, cradled her puppy. New York senator Jacob Javits leapt from a diving board into the outdoor pool.

  Life compared Watergate West to a cruise ship—“with curved decks and rooftop smokestacks”—and listed the Watergate’s “luxury” appointments: a lobby “resplendent with fake Chou Dynasty lamps,” curtains “handwoven in Swaziland,” elevators “flooded with Muzak” and bathrooms “paved with marble and equipped with bidets and golden faucets.” A total of twenty-three closed-circuit cameras watched over residents in Watergate East and West.

  “Any American who comes under the heading of ‘forgotten’ may as well not apply,” Life continued. “Membership in Watergate . . . is sharply restricted both socially and financially.”

  IN WASHINGTON IT USED TO BE GEORGETOWN—NOW IT’S WATERGATE, read the headline. JUST EVERYBODY LIVES THERE.

  ON SUNDAY, JUNE 13, 1971, MUCH OF THE FRONT PAGE OF the Washington Post was dedicated to the Rose Garden wedding of Tricia Nixon and Edward Finch Cox. About four hundred guests watched President Nixon give his oldest daughter away, braving a light rain; Alice Roosevelt said she felt as if she had been sitting on a “wet sponge” during the ceremony. Several guests used their white satin programs to shield themselves from the rain. Martha Mitchell, however, was “sitting snugly protected by her yellow parasol,” reported the Post, ignoring instructions to check her umbrella.

  More than a dozen Watergate residents were among the guests at the wedding ceremony and reception, including the Mitchells; Shelley and Pat Buchanan (the Nixons had attended their wedding a few months earlier, and Pat had moved into Shelley’s apartment); Mary Brooks; Helen and Arthur Burns; Patricia and Victor Lasky, a White House speechwriter; the Mosbachers; Fred J. Russell, the undersecretary of the Interior; and Rose Mary Woods. Kathy and Maurice Stans were unable to attend, as their son was getting married the same day in New York. Anna Chennault was not invited to the wedding, the Post reported, and “was diplomatically out of town.”

  That day, the New York Times ran the Nixon-Cox wedding on its front page, which also included the first of several stories about a three-thousand-page study of America’s involvement in Indochina over the past three decades. The leaked documents would become known as the Pentagon Papers.

  AS THE FINAL BUILDINGS IN THE WATERGATE—THE WATERGATE 600 offices and the adjacent Watergate South apartment building—prepared to open, Washington’s commercial real estate market began to sputter. The General Services Administration reduced its standard rate to $5.40 per square foot, down nearly 10 percent from a year earlier. Some luxury buildings in the District had leased to the government at that rate, just to have rent coming in.

  Over a weekend in mid-August, President Nixon met with fifteen advisors, including Federal Reserve chairman Burns and treasury secretary John Connally, to plan a response to two crises: Great Britain’s demand for $3 billion in gold from the United States and an inflation rate that was running three times above recent levels. In a nationally televised address on August 15, 1971, President Nixon ordered a freeze on “all prices and wages throughout the United States” for ninety days and disconnected the dollar from the price of gold. In a poll conducted shortly after Nixon’s speech, 75 percent of Americans backed his “New Economic Policy.” At the Watergate South sales office, however, prospective tenants, uncertain about the economy, began to delay their lease negotiations or back out of them entirely.

  Nicolas Salgo, Royce Ward and the Watergate leasing team desperately needed a full-floor tenant to reassure Samaritani and other jittery SGI executives back in Rome. Ward stepped up marketing efforts, sending a mailer to local trade associations; a select group of New York law firms; professionals in the District, Maryland and Northern Virginia; embassies, unions and nonprofits. A veteran in local real estate who had survived other recessions, he deployed a tactic that had worked before: His team inspected older buildings in Washington, discovered their flaws and wrote to their tenants. “Not criticizing their buildings,” a sales associate explained in a memo that was shared with SGI officials back in Rome, “but if their elevators are slow, we emphasize our high-speed elevators; if their building is dark, we emphasize our light airiness.”

  Salgo and Ward explored other ways to fill the new office building, like putting a Watergate Club on the seventh floor, which might include sixty small furnished offices that could be rented out monthly, an idea that was being tried out in other cities. To capitalize on the excitement surrounding the Kennedy Center, scheduled to open in September, the sales team drew up a new brochure which read: “People who appreciate the beauty and the excitement of our glamorous new neighbor, The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, are people who would enjoy the Watergate, where living is an art, too.”

  “We are trying everything that is possible to bring in every inquiry we can,” a Watergate salesman assured Ward. “To lease, we have to find the individual who is willing to pay more for the Watergate atmosphere.”

  The law firm of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson had represented the Watergate developers in many transactions, including the original arrangement of financing with the John Hancock insurance company and the mortgage on Watergate 600. The firm was looking to expand and signed a lease for space at 18th and K Streets downtown when Nicolas Salgo reached out to Hans Frank, a named partner with the firm, to ask him to consider the Watergate’s new office building. They had already signed a lease elsewhere, but Salgo wa
s insistent and offered a very favorable lease—including payment of all penalties that would be incurred by dropping plans to move into the building downtown. Not wanting to disappoint a good client and risk losing future business, Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson took over the entire sixth floor of Watergate 600, with a sweeping terrace overlooking the Potomac.

  The firm’s partners loved the building, another partner of the firm, Daniel M. Singer recalled, because it was convenient to the neighborhoods of northern Virginia, Maryland and northwest Washington, where most of them lived. But the staff “hated” the building, he said, in part because there was no “cheap place” to eat or shop anywhere on the Watergate grounds.

  Luchino Villarosa, a Watergate leasing associate, pitched the Italian ambassador to the United States, Egidio Ortona, to relocate the Italian embassy to Watergate South. The embassy’s current address, above Adams Morgan, was “no longer one of the best,” Ortona acknowledged, but the convenience of having the embassy, chancery and official residence all in one spot would be difficult to replicate, unless something could be built from scratch. Besides, he said, the Italian parliament would have to approve the cost, which was highly unlikely.

  Villarosa next called on the Italian embassy’s Commercial Minister Alberto Rossi and gave him a list of diplomatic outposts the Watergate was exploring as potential tenants for their final office building, including the embassies of Korea, Mexico and the Philippines. Villarosa considered Rossi an important part of the Watergate marketing strategy. “Being in contact socially with so many eminent people,” Villarosa wrote Aldo Samaritani back in Rome, the minister could publicize “our leasing advantages.” Morever, Rossi was a Watergate resident.

  Villarosa next met with Guillermo Sevilla Sacasa, the Nicaraguan ambassador to the United States since 1943 and dean of the diplomatic corps. Villarosa reported back to Rome that Sevilla Sacasa was “most receptive and provided a number of excellent ideas” regarding diplomatic tenants, including some of the 120 different chanceries and missions currently renting space all over the city. The Watergate was attractive, Sevilla Sacasa suggested, because of its proximity to the State Department, the on-site hotel, shopping and restaurant facilities, and its “prestigious name.”