The Watergate

by Joseph Rodota

  “We’re so pleased,” said Diedrich. “It’s delightful.”

  “We won. We won,” said Evelyn Y. Davis, a self-described “corporate watchdog” living in Watergate East.

  “I’m very, very frustrated,” lamented Audrey Wolf.

  “I can’t believe it,” added her husband. “I’m not very happy.”

  While the votes were being tallied and before the outcome was announced, however, the Watergate East board of directors, which was narrowly in favor of the hotel conversion, called a special meeting. They voted five to four, with two members absent, to sell the parking spaces to Monument Realty. Three weeks later, the board reaffirmed its support for the sale but agreed to wait for a final ruling from the Delaware Court of Chancery.

  IN AUGUST, MONUMENT REALTY ANNOUNCED IT HAD COMPLETED the purchase of the Watergate Hotel from Blackstone—the Washington Post reported the sale price at around $55 million—and announced the new name for the building: Belles Rives at The Watergate. In the coming months, as the hotel prepared to close, the developer offered charitable organizations discounted rates for the use of public reception areas. Potential buyers of cooperative apartments were invited to spend a free last night in the hotel in the suites where their new homes would soon be located.

  Darby approached Thomas Keller, the famed chef and founder of Per Se in New York and The French Laundry in California, to open a new restaurant at the Watergate. As a young man, Keller had begged Jean-Louis Palladin to hire him as an apprentice chef. “I will not teach you,” Palladin sneered, and turned him down.

  Over dinner, Darby made the case to Keller for returning to Washington in triumph, and working out of the same building where Jean-Louis Palladin had reinvented American cuisine.

  “I could see it in his eyes,” Darby recalled. “A desire to go back to where he’d been told he can’t do something—and then do it.”

  Darby took some friends to the top floor of the Watergate Hotel late at night and showed them the spectacular views of the Potomac River, Georgetown, the National Cathedral, the Kennedy Center and the Washington Monument. The others went inside, but he stayed on the balcony for a few more minutes.

  As he looked around, he found it hard to believe that “a guy like me”—a surfer from Australia—was now an American citizen and the owner of a building that had so much history in the United States.

  Wow, he said to himself.

  ON OCTOBER 18, 2004, WILLIAM B. CHANDLER III RELEASED his third and final decision on the Watergate controversy from the Delaware Court of Chancery. In light of the “acrimony separating the two membership factions”—those supporting and those opposing the sale—the Watergate East board of directors “had a duty to establish a fair, open, fully informed, and verifiable vote,” he wrote. Because the ballots had been destroyed “prior to verification and during a period of increasing inquisition,” he added, “the April vote lost any indicia of reliability and fair process.” He concluded the April 12, 2004, vote, at which the sale of property to Monument Realty was narrowly approved, was “fatally flawed” and tossed it aside.

  He next turned to the vote held on June 9, 2004—which was requested by petition from more than fifty owners and monitored by the League of Women Voters—at which the sale of property to Monument Realty was declined. He praised the board of directors for avoiding another debacle and certified the results as “the only legitimate vote cast on the Monument sale.”

  That left one open issue: the intervening vote by the Watergate East board of directors, the day after the June vote, to approve the sale to Monument. Chandler referred to his February 25 order, in which he stated the owners of Watergate East had been informed for more than a year that they would have the opportunity for a “fair and meaningful” vote on the sale. While the composition of the Watergate East board had shifted from a six-to-five anti-sale majority to a six-to-five pro-sale majority, he said, that did not change the fact that the owners themselves were promised a vote. Chandler ordered the June 9, 2004, vote against the sale to be counted. The sale was off.

  “We feel vindicated,” said Jack Olender.

  Said another Watergate East resident opposed to the conversion: “It’s delightful. It’s delicious. It’s de-victory.”

  THE HISTORIC PRESERVATION REVIEW BOARD MET ON FEBRUARY 23, 2005, to consider the application from the Committee to Preserve the Watergate Heritage to designate the Watergate as a historic landmark. Chairman Boasberg opened the hearing by stating the obvious: The Watergate application, he said, was “an extremely interesting case.”

  Over the past several months, the board received a number of letters, nearly all in support of landmark status. The DC Preservation League called the Watergate “an exceptional example of modern era design in Washington, DC.” The local chapter of Docomomo, an organization founded in 1988 to protect important examples of modern architecture, praised the Watergate as an example of a “brief but exhilarating period” of twentieth-century architecture, and noted that the use of “computer-aided design” was “quite revolutionary at the time.” James M. Goode, author of Best Addresses: A Century of Washington’s Distinguished Apartment Houses, which featured the Watergate, praised “the sweeping, curvilinear building footprints and the ‘sawtooth’ railings of the numerous balconies that provide both air circulation and privacy to residents.” The Watergate, he added, “remains the best example of self-contained living in the city.”

  Richard Longstreth, a professor at George Washington University and past president of the Society of Architectural Historians, endorsed landmark status. “As a design,” he wrote, “Watergate indeed stands alone—not just in Washington, but in North America.” The Watergate may seem like a “strange” group of buildings, but that was only because it was “really one-of-a-kind in the United States.” The Watergate represented Luigi Moretti’s response to a major current in Italian architecture of the 1950s and 1960s, which found inspiration in natural forms. Moretti developed “an equally bold approach to design” by applying mathematical principals to organic forms. “Watergate is famous in Italian architectural circles,” Longstreth explained, “not for its political associations, but as Moretti’s most ambitious and most fully developed manifestation of this pursuit.”

  Mario di Valmarana, who worked on the Watergate as a young architect and was now a professor at the University of Virginia, endorsed landmark designation and urged the historic preservation board to protect the “overall look” of the Watergate, as well as its important details, such as signage and canopies. Changes to these elements of the building, he wrote, “if not legislated and controlled, can jeopardize the intrinsic beauty of the complex.”

  The board of Watergate South supported the designation of the Watergate as a historic landmark. The president of the Watergate South board of directors, Dr. Neil Livingstone, a counterterrorism expert and author of a 1996 book, Protect Yourself in an Uncertain World: A Comprehensive Handbook for Your Personal and Business Security, once received a letter in the mail from overseas, addressed simply to “Neil Livingstone, The Watergate, USA.” The fact that the letter reached Livingstone, wrote Jason Finch, the general manager of Watergate South, “is a clear indication that the name recognition of The Watergate is worldwide.”

  The board of directors of Watergate East, however, opposed landmark status. They feared treating Timchenko’s landscaping as a historic landmark would be “impractical and confining” in the future, as plants and trees aged and needed to be replaced. Moreover, because the Watergate was built before passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act and before 9/11, security and accessibility upgrades would become “arduous” and “time-consuming” if the property was designated a landmark. But the board’s biggest concern was the motivation behind the landmark crusade itself. “In the main,” wrote Dan Sheehan, president of the board, “the proponents of this stratagem are among the cohort opposing the change in use of the Watergate Hotel. Our fear is they have been misled into assuming an ‘historic
’ designation would preclude any change in use” from the original Watergate zoning. “It is our intent to preserve Watergate East as the unique property it has become and to strive to enhance its value to the city and our residents,” he concluded. “We feel this can best be accomplished without additional regulation and cumbersome oversight.”

  Emily Eig battled a minor case of laryngitis as she briefed the board on the “exceptional significance” of the Watergate. She showed how the placement of the buildings by Luigi Moretti took advantage of the spectacular view of the Potomac, but did not “turn its back on the city.” She noted the office buildings lacked balconies, a treatment chosen by Moretti to differentiate business and residential use within the complex. She compared Watergate West to an ocean liner, and pointed out the “nautical feel” of the rooftop structures, inspired by Gaudí’s buildings in Barcelona.

  The Watergate, Eig said, was conceived at a time when people were moving to the suburbs in droves, driven in part by the fear of racial violence. The Watergate bucked that trend. It drew people back into the city, giving them urban amenities they thought were lost. And it offered “modernity” at a time when cities seemed old and tired.

  She then turned to the Watergate scandal. The break-in at the Watergate “changed the face of politics,” she said. “It also changed the face of journalism.”

  After the board’s analyst explained how modifications to the buildings and grounds could be performed over time, Chairman Boasberg signaled his approval. Another commissioner, who said he came into the hearing “a doubter”—“I never warmed up to it architecturally,” he said—concluded the Watergate’s architecture was “quite wonderful.”

  By a unanimous vote, the board designated the Watergate a historic landmark and ordered it to be entered into the District of Columbia Inventory of Historic Sites and listed in the National Register of Historic Places. According to the board, the applicants had made a compelling case for the “special nature” of the Watergate. Moretti’s design—“at once urban and anti-urban”—replaced an aging industrial area but did not perpetuate the existing street grid; instead it created a new form on the location, with spaces “more on the scale of an urban square, rather than the immense no-man’s-lands of Corbusier.” The board also embraced the Watergate’s “notorious position in American history,” as the site of “a significant, and probably transcendently important event.”

  “The Watergate made peace with its own history,” Eig reflected years later. “And Washington made peace with the Watergate.”

  KAREN JOHNSON WORKED IN THE FIRST PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN of George W. Bush. A native Texan, she did not join the administration in 2001 but stayed in Texas as a lobbyist for the association of state public works contractors, which her father headed. Work brought them to Washington frequently and in 2005 they decided to buy a condo, rather than continue to waste money on hotels. Through a real estate agent, Karen learned of a co-op apartment on the tenth floor of Watergate South. The owner had inherited the apartment from his parents, who were among the original buyers in 1971, and was eager to sell.

  When Karen and her father first saw the unit, it was ghastly: boxes everywhere, stacks of newspapers and magazines, piles of clothes. The owner had carved out space for a futon in the middle of the living room to sleep. Tom turned to his daughter and said, “We ain’t doing this.”

  But Karen looked out the windows and took in the view of the Potomac River. She could see Georgetown University and Key Bridge. A balcony ran the entire length of the apartment.

  “It’s got great bones,” she said to her father. “And it has potential.”

  She turned to the real estate agent. “I’ll take it.”

  ONE SUNDAY AFTERNOON IN WATERGATE SOUTH, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sat at her Steinway piano with four friends who made up her chamber music ensemble: Sohye Kim, the first violinist, with two degrees from Juilliard; Robert Battey, the cellist, who taught music at the University of Missouri for twelve years; Lawrence Wallace, the violist, a former law school professor who served as deputy solicitor general under eight presidents; and Joshua Klein, the second violinist and youngest member of the group, and a former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

  When Rice first arrived in Washington in early 2001 to become President George W. Bush’s national security advisor, she chose this Watergate South apartment the same way she decided on every other place she had lived—because it had a good spot for her piano. For Vogue magazine, Annie Leibovitz photographed Rice running on her treadmill, watching a baseball game in her study and resting an elbow on her piano, in a Duchesse-satin strapless evening gown by Richard Tyler ($2,795). The photos and the accompanying article hit newsstands just a few days after the 9/11 attacks.

  After tuning up, Rice and the other members of the ensemble played through the first movement of Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E flat major. “We generally like to start off with a nice finger-buster for the Secretary,” Battey, the cellist, joked. After the Schumann, they turned to the first movement of Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet in G minor, a piece they were still learning, and fell out of sync. “My tempo is not your tempo,” Rice said. They tried again—and stumbled once more. “I hesitated to turn the page.” Rice frowned. “I’ll get that fixed.” After Shostakovich, they played Brahms’s Piano Quintet in F minor, which went well. Then they packed up their instruments and hung around for white wine and cheese before saying goodbye.

  Members of the chamber group had become “like my best friends,” Rice said. “We are like family.”

  In addition to regular chamber music sessions, Rice hosted an annual Christmas party at her apartment, inviting colleagues from the White House and the State Department. The first year at the Watergate, Attorney General John Ashcroft, a competent pianist, played Christmas carols. Another year, Yo-Yo Ma played the cello.

  Karl Rove, Bush’s top political advisor at the White House, knew that his White House colleague Harriet Miers was friends with Nathan Hecht, a justice on the Texas State Supreme Court and a brilliant pianist. Rove persuaded Miers to bring Hecht along as her plus-one the following year, and nudged Hecht to take a turn at the piano. Rice was wowed by his virtuoso performance. “I think that guaranteed me an invitation from then on,” Rove later recalled. The party may have had remarkable musicians, but the singers left something to be desired. “It was the worst ‘12 Days of Christmas’ you ever heard in your life,” Rove said, laughing.

  Years later, another element of Rice’s annual Watergate South party was stuck in his memory: “The worst Christmas goodies you’ve ever seen. We were opening the Triscuit boxes to find something to put the cheese on.”

  “Thank God,” Rove laughed, “the foreign policy of the United States did not depend on Condi Rice having to lay out a lavish set of hors d’oeuvres.”

  ON APRIL 27, 2006, SCOT J. PALTROW REPORTED IN THE Wall Street Journal a new development in the federal investigation of former congressman Randall “Duke” Cunningham, who had resigned from Congress seven months earlier, admitted taking $2.4 million in bribes and pleaded guilty to tax evasion and conspiracy. According to Paltrow’s report, federal investigators were expanding their investigation of defense contractor Brent Wilkes to determine whether he had provided Cunningham with prostitutes and the free use of hotel suites, including rooms at the Watergate.

  Another contractor, Mitchell Wade, who had already pleaded guilty to charges of bribing Cunningham and was cooperating with prosecutors, said Cunningham occasionally called him to request a prostitute and Wade would then send a limousine to pick up a woman, swing by the congressman’s apartment and deliver them both to the Watergate Hotel. According to Wade, Wilkes arranged the transportation, sourced the prostitutes and rented the suites at the hotel.

  San Diego Union Tribune reporters Marcus Stern, Jerry Kammer, Dean Calbreath and George E. Condon, Jr., who had earned a Pulitzer Prize for their reporting on the Cunningham scandal the year before, now set thei
r sights on Brent Wilkes. They learned from a confidential source that Wilkes would often come to Washington on a Sunday or Monday and stay in a Watergate suite for several days, before flying back home to San Diego. He would store his suits—and his booze—at the hotel between trips.

  New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote that Kyle “Dusty” Foggo, a favorite of CIA director Porter Goss and the third-highest official in the spy agency, was a close friend of Brent Wilkes, who was now “entangled in allegations of louche and lewd behavior involving limos, hookers, a poker player with a missing digit from the CIA named ‘Nine Fingers,’ and Watergate hospitality suites where more was offered than just Scotch and pretzels.”

  “Been to the Watergate, haven’t done that,” Dowd wrote.

  The CIA eventually confirmed Foggo had attended poker games at the Watergate Hotel with Brent Wilkes, his “close boyhood friend.” On May 5, Foggo’s boss, CIA director Porter Goss resigned after just two years on the job.

  In November 2007, a jury convicted Brent Wilkes of thirteen counts of bribery, conspiracy and money laundering. According to prosecutors, Wilkes had supplied Cunningham with meals, gifts, trips and prostitutes for over a decade. Wilkes funneled $636,000 in cash bribes to Cunningham, including $535,000 to pay off a mortgage on the congressman’s home in Rancho Santa Fe. In exchange, Cunningham used his influence in Congress to place earmarks in the federal budget and then steered up to $87 million in federal contracts to Wilkes.

  A year later, Foggo pleaded guilty to one count of fraud. Prosecutors said Foggo helped Wilkes win a $3 million contract to supply bottled water to CIA personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan, in return for the promise of a lucrative job and lavish gifts, including a week-long stay at a Scottish castle.

  Former Reagan campaign manager and White House aide Ed Rollins gave the scandal a name: Hookergate.

  AS HUNDREDS OF NEW CONDOMINIUMS FLOODED THE DISTRICT real estate market in 2006, Darby reevaluated his plans for Belles Rives at The Watergate. In January 2007, Monument Realty resurfaced with a new strategy to operate the Watergate Hotel as a hybrid: switching from 100 percent cooperative apartments to a mix of one-third apartments and two-thirds “ultra-luxury” hotel suites. The shift, he argued, would allow the Watergate to compete at the level of the Ritz-Carlton and Four Seasons chains.