Joseph Rodota - The Watergate

SLAP.

A doorman dropped a copy of the Washington Post at the threshold of a Watergate apartment and continued down the long, curved hallway.

Slap.

He dropped a paper at the next doorstep, and the next, as he made his deliveries through the building.

Slap. Slap. Slap.

Watergate residentssome dressed for work, others still in bathrobesopened their doors, grabbed their newspapers and stepped back inside their apartments. It was Friday, June 16, 1972. , a smiling President Richard Nixon embraced President Luis Echeverra of Mexico at the formal welcoming ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House. The United Nations had launched a new agency to promote international cooperation on the environment, to which the Nixon administration had already committed $100 million. The Soviet news agency Pravda said a thaw in relations with the United States was both necessary and desirable. And Raymond Lee Cadillac Smith, a legendary figure among Washingtons underworld of pimps, gamblers and hired killers, was finally captured at a Holiday Inn in Kingsport, Tennessee, ending a two-month spree of kidnapping, robbery and murder.

Early risers headed to the Watergate health club to swim in the indoor saltwater pool or use one of the new treadmills, which the club called Each lap in the pool offered the comfort of routine in an era of unpredictability. Each mile on a treadmill measured progress in a city often frustrated by partisan or bureaucratic gridlock.

The Watergate comprised six buildings spread over ten immaculately landscaped acres: the alone, recorded the comings and goings of members of Congress, cabinet secretaries, White House aides, journalists, judges and diplomats. Owners of Watergate apartments, from massive penthouses with Potomac River views to modest one-bedrooms overlooking the Howard Johnson Motor Lodge, had something in common: a desire to be close to the center of power in the capital city of the most powerful nation on earth.

Frank Wills, a guard with the Watergate Office Buildings private security firm, .

Rose Mary Woods stepped into the hall and locked the door to her two-bedroom apartment on the seventh floor of Watergate East. She had worked for Richard Nixon as his personal secretary since 1951, when he moved from the House to the Senate, but she was essentially a member of the familythe Fifth Nixon, some said. She headed to the garage for her eight-minute commute to the White House.

At the other end of the Watergate, in a large seventh-floor duplex apartment with both city and river views, Martha Mitchell packed for California. She was still angry with her husband, John, who had resigned as attorney general four months earlier

Upstairs in her two-story penthouse on the fourteenth floor of Watergate East, Anna Chennault opened the Washington Post and turned to the Style section, where she found her nameMrs. Claire Lee Chennaulton the guest list for last nights state dinner at the White House, which included four members of Nixons cabinet, three U.S. senators and two neighbors at the Watergate: Nixons campaign finance chief Maurice Stans and his wife, Kathy, who lived on the tenth floor of Watergate East, and the dashing yachtsman Emil Bud Mosbacher, Jr., Nixons chief of protocol, and his wife, Patty, who lived in a suite at the Watergate Hotel. Guests dined on scallops and beef with mushrooms. The Nixons served a Schloss Johannisberger Riesling, followed by a claret. After dinner, everyone moved to the East Room and listened to a performance by New Orleans jazz clarinetist Pete Fountain. President Nixon turned to Jack Benny, who had flown in from Los Angeles for the evening, and said it was a tragedy that Benny had left his violin in California.

In his fourth-floor studio apartment, Walter Pforzheimer finished getting ready for work. Since 1956, he curated the CIAs Historical Intelligence Collectionthe spy agencys in-house library. Pforzheimer owned two apartments at the Watergate: this studio, where he slept and dressed, and a one-bedroom duplex on the seventh floor, where he hosted visitors and displayed his personal collection of espionage literature and artifacts related to spies and spying, including the canceled passport of Mata Hari.

, the secretary of transportation, who lived with his wife, Jennie, in a Watergate East penthouse.

, Anna Chennault arrived at the embassy of the Republic of Vietnam, to say goodbye in person to her friend Bi Diem, on his final day as South Vietnams ambassador to the United States.

At 10:17, Nixon adjourned the cabinet meeting and returned to the Oval Office to discuss with a few key aides the progress of welfare reform legislation on Capitol Hill. The day before, nineteen Republican senators had written Nixon urging him to work more closely with Senator Abraham A. Ribicoff, Democrat of Connecticut, to draft a welfare reform compromise. Ribicoff and his wife, Ruth, lived in the Watergate, as did two GOP senators who signed the letter: Jacob K. Javits of New York and Edward W. Brooke of Massachusetts.

By 10:00, most of the shops at the Watergate were open. At 11:00, the morning mail was sorted and ready to be picked up at the front desk in each of the three apartment buildings.

At National Airport, just ten minutes and three traffic lights from the Watergate, Martha and John Mitchell provided to them by Gulf Oil. Marthas personal secretary, Lea Jablonsky, and the Mitchells eleven-year-old daughter, Marty, joined them on the flight to California. Marty looked forward to visiting Disneyland. Martha looked forward to getting a few days rest at the beach.

, following a quick stop at the South Korean embassy to meet with Ambassador Kim Dong Jo, Anna Chennault met Ray Cline for lunch. Their friendship went back decades to her days as a reporter in China, before the Communists seized power. Cline, the former CIA station chief in Taipei, now directed intelligence gathering for the State Department.

Back at the Watergate, women gathered to swim, sunbathe and gossip at one of the three outdoor swimming pools. Each regular had her favorite spot. a tennis court and a movie theatre, said Mrs. Herbert Saltzman, who lived next door to Senator and Mrs. Javits in Watergate West, I dont think Id ever have occasion to leave the place.

The Mitchells and their entourage arrived in Los Angeles and were whisked off to the Beverly Hills Hotel.. After a room-service dinner, John retired early and Martha stayed up and had a few drinks.

Four men, using assumed names, at the hotel restaurant.

At 10:50, a man signed the logbook in the lobby of the Watergate Office Building and took the elevator to the eighth floor, where the Federal Reserve kept an office. He taped open the stairwell locks on the eighth floor before continuing down to the sixth floor, taping its door as well as the doors on the B-2 and B-3 levels, and those leading to the underground garage.

On the sixth floor of the Watergate Office Building, in the offices of the Democratic National Committee, and relieve himself in one of the potted plants. He was observed by a man stationed in Room 723 of the Howard Johnson Motor Lodge, across the street, who passed word to the men in Room 314 of the Watergate Hotel that the DNC suite was still occupied.

At 11:51, Frank Wills returned to the Watergate Office Building to begin his midnight to 8:00 A.M. shift. He made his rounds and discovered tape on the door locks at levels B-2 and B-3. He removed the tape, returned to his desk in the lobby and documented his discovery in his logbook. He called the answering service for GSS, the private security firm for which he worked, and left a message for his supervisor to call him.