Description
A biography of Washington's most famous apartment complex -- the buildings with a thousand stories of the notables who have lived there
From the day The Watergate officially opened in October 1965, living there meant being at the epicenter of politics and international intrigue. Virtually every major Washington figure in the 1960’s and 1970’s -- from J. Edgar Hoover to John and Martha Mitchell to Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward-had a connection to the the building. In The Watergate, writer and political consultant Joseph Rodota skillfully weaves the stories of such insiders into a riveting narrative history of a building that was a central hub of Washington for more than a decade. Along the way, Rodota introduces us to the Watergate’s secret movers and shakers who made the Beltway tick. There’s Anna Chenault, who dated Tommy Corcoran, Washington’s first “super lobbyist,” and was known as Washington’s “Tiger Hostess” for the lavish dinners and cocktail parties she hosted in her Watergate penthouse. Walter Pforzheimer, one of the “founding fathers” of the CIA, kept two apartments at the Watergate, one for his collection of literature on spying, and the other to sleep in. He chose the building because its cement-and-steel construction meant the floor was strong enough to hold his safe, and was a ubiquitous, if enigmatic, presence at the complex. And during the Nixon-Watergate scandal, the irrepressible Martha Mitchell was actually living there! During the Clinton years, it was almost known as "little Little Rock." Through the stories of both Washington royalty, and these lesser-known yet fascinating residents, Rodota achieves a history of Washington through the chronicle of its best-known residential building.
