The Watergate by Joseph Rodota

Author:Joseph Rodota
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-01-30T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight: A Nest for High-Flyers

There is no other place in the world quite like Watergate, and everyone who lives and breathes there knows it.

Town & Country, June 1982

REPUBLICAN JOHN WARNER WAS FIRST ELECTED TO THE United States Senate in 1978, but after the Reagan landslide of 1980, in which the Republicans took over the Senate majority, Warner decided it was time to ditch his row house in Washington’s Dupont Circle neighborhood and move into Watergate South, upstairs from his good friends Elizabeth and Bob Dole. When Warner suggested the move to his wife, the actress Elizabeth Taylor, she replied, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

Each of the three Watergate apartment buildings had its own rules and regulations governing pets. Depending on the building, you could have a pet if you owned your apartment, but not if you were a renter. If you combined two apartments, you could have two pets. In one building, concerns about the rising pet population resulted in a temporary rule: If your pet died, you were not allowed to replace it. In Watergate South, each resident was allowed no more than two pets.

Elizabeth Taylor owned a succession of cats, dogs and birds. She called them her babies.

In December 1981, a few days before Christmas, Elizabeth Taylor and Senator John Warner announced their breakup. They divorced on November 7, 1982. “What precipitated the separation,” according to a Taylor biographer, “was not an act of infidelity, but rather one of thoughtlessness.” Faced with the choice—her husband or her “babies”—Elizabeth Taylor dumped her husband.

IN JUNE 1982, TOWN & COUNTRY MAGAZINE PUBLISHED AN eleven-page feature story on the Watergate, Washington’s “next-best power address”—second only to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue—and home to “the chicest deli south of Zabar’s”; “the best French restaurant in Washington”; a pastry shop “riddled with Sacher torte and other such sins”; four psychiatrists; and a beauty salon that doubled as “the scene of the best daily gossipfest in town.” “Privacy is rampant if so desired; security is on a soothing par with that of Buckingham Palace.” The only downside: “There is no disco, no golf course and no tennis courts—not even an itty-bitty private one.”

“The world of Watergate is an intricate intaglio of personalities where no lines are drawn.” Democrats lived across the hall from Republicans. Residents included “presidents of large and small corporations,” lawyers, doctors and “merry widows.” Ambassadors and other diplomats from Europe (Sweden), the Middle East (Yemen, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates), South America (Brazil and Suriname), Asia (Japan and Korea) and Africa (Somalia) were “supremely content” with their Watergate offices.

The article was accompanied by portraits of twenty-five Watergate residents, posing in their Watergate apartments or offices, or shopping at the Les Champs arcade. “Smiling like a proud father,” Nicolas Salgo posed on the terrace of the Kennedy Center as the Watergate loomed behind him. Ambassador Randolph Kidder and his wife, Dorothy—although he was sworn in as President Johnson’s ambassador to Cambodia, his credentials were rejected by Prince Sihanouk and he returned

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.