Phil Stanford - White House Call Girl: The Real Watergate Story

White House Call Girl

Copyright 2013 Phil Stanford

Feral House
1240 W. Sims Way Suite 124
Port Townsend, WA 98368

design by Bill Smith, designSimple

Foreword

Heidis the name. And in case you havent figured out the game yet, you might want to take a peek at one of her earlier nude photos, circa 1957 or 58which is to say, roughly fifteen years before she either did or didnt get involved in the Watergate affair.

That, of course, is the question before us.

Its how she got her start, you seemoonlighting as a nude model while still serving as a private in the U.S. Army in Washington, D.C. Not long after she arrived at her duty station in the nations capital, she was named Miss Fort Myer. The photographer who covered the event asked her if shed like to do something a little more interesting, and as so often happens, one thing led to another.

And while that may not be a typical career path for an aspiring photographers modelor stripper, which was Heidis next big career moveyou can see how it might have worked for her.

So if the soft curves and round, plump nipples offend your sense of historical propriety, just take a deep breath and think of it as documentary evidencebecause thats what it is. If you didnt know before what it takes to get into the jet set party girl business, well, now youve got a pretty good idea.

More importantly, though, the photo should lend some flesh and blood substance to the life of a woman whose ghost has hovered over the Watergate saga for years now. Even today, as we go about celebrating the fortieth anniversary of that long-ago political scandal, there is a nasty little argument among Watergate scholars, not to mention all the others who have axes to grind, over what role, if any, she played.

As it happens, theres a good deal of evidence that a call girl operation Heidi was running in 1972 triggered the infamous break-in that led to the downfall of the thirty-seventh president of the United States, Richard M. Nixon.

Needless to say, this is not part of the Watergate story that has come down to us over the decades. There are, in fact, those who disagree so vehemently with this version of events that theyve suedunsuccessfully, as its turned outto prevent it from being discussed in print.

If youre not careful, you might even end up being called a conspiracy theorist.

And if all else fails, they can always call you crazywhich is what happened to a young lawyer named Phillip Bailley, one of the principle witnesses to this roundly ignored bit of American history. When it appeared that he might be foolish enough to blow the whistle on Heidi and her call girl ring, he was locked up at St. Elizabeths, the District of Columbias mental hospital. In the ward for the criminally insane, no less.

Some forty years later, rhetorically at least, thats still the last line of defense for those who would like this story to go away.

Well, at least you can't say you haven't been warned.

Five Men in Suits

Its two thirty a.m. on a sweaty summer night in Washington, D.C., June 17, 1972. Five men in business suits, wearing surgical gloves and carrying electronic and photographic gear, are arrested at gunpoint inside the headquarters of the Democratic National Committeelocated, as we will never be allowed to forget, on the sixth floor of a plush new apartment and office complex called the Watergate.

The police quickly trace the burglars to the White House, home and headquarters of Republican President Richard M. Nixon. At first, the White House press secretary tries to brush it off, calling it a third-rate burglary. But theres obviously something fishy going on here.

Day after day, the newspapers pick apart the cover-up. Before long, what began as a public embarrassment has become a political firestorm. Within the year, the nation is glued to their television sets, watching almost daily installments of the Watergate hearings conducted by a Special Watergate Committee of the U.S. Senate.

Today, some forty years later, Watergate is not just the name of a political scandal that resulted in the resignationthe first and only time everof a president of the United States. It has passed into the language and become the suffix of choice for scandal itself. Liquor-gate, Contra-gate, Bounty-gate, you name it.

Yet, oddly enough, no one really knows for sure why the burglary took place.

Certainly, there are those who will tell you they do. The standard version, endorsed by the Senate Watergate Committee itself, is that it was to gather political intelligence on the Democrats. Also, that it was undoubtedly ordered by the ranking membersAll the Presidents Men, if you willof the Nixon administration.

After all, why else would five guys in suits, carrying electronic and photographic gear, with connections to the White House, be poking around in DNC headquarters in the middle of the night? Case closed, right?

For those who subscribe to the conventional line on Watergate, the heroes of this political morality tale are the two young Washington Post reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who, along with their mysterious tipster, Deep Throat, exposed the White House cover-up and ultimately brought down the president.

Right up there with them is the Watergate committees star witness, John Dean. Who can forget him, horned-rimmed glasses and all, testifying to the packed galleries: the earnest young White House aide who saw the error of his ways in time to step forward and save the Republic.

Its a great story, the stuff that Academy Award-winning movies are made of. The only problem is that its not entirely true.

of phone conversations that had been overheard at the DNC, the original prosecutor of the Watergate burglars was apparently going to allege that the break-in was to gather material for sexual blackmail. Over the years, in fact, theres been a steady accumulation of evidence linking the call girl operation to key players in the Watergate drama.

And at the center of this alternative version of Watergate history is a former stripper named Heidi Rikan, said to be running a call girl operation a block or so from the Watergate at another big apartment complex called the Columbia Plaza. According to those who find this theory worth considering, the burglary was most likely committed to obtain blackmail information on clients the DNC was sending to the Columbia Plaza.

A Little Black Book

According to the Revisionists, weve even got the good guys and bad guys mixed up. The way they see it, John Dean isnt the hero of Watergate at all. He is, in fact, Watergates arch villain. Not only did he order the fateful break-in at the DNC offices, but once the burglars were arrested, he directed the White House cover-up.

And then, when it became obvious that the cover-up was going to crumble, Dean switched sides in exchange for a deal and became the star witness for the prosecution.

Precisely what Dean expected to accomplish by sending burglars into the DNCwhether to gather information on some of the call girl rings clients, who were being referred from the DNC, or to save himself from a possible political sex scandal remains unclear.