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History See other History Articles Title: How the Watergate Scandal Almost Had a Different Name The Democratic National Committee was broke and almost evicted from its office space. But someone stepped in at the last minute. Today, the -gate suffix is still used to describe many a political scandal. But at the time of the break-in, the Democratic National Committee was barely hanging on to its tony Foggy Bottom digs. Deeply indebted and falling behind on rent, the DNC was almost evicted from the Watergate building just as the 1972 election was taking off. This is the story of how the Watergate scandal almost took place somewhere else. *** As the 1968 election approached, John Bailey, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, learned from his landlord that the rent on the committee’s K Street offices was going to be hiked significantly. “We need to find another space,” Bailey told his administrative assistant, R. Spencer Oliver, who began reaching out to real estate agents. One day, Oliver’s phone rang. It was Giuseppe Cecchi, an executive who had been placed in charge of his Italian real estate company’s “Foggy Bottom project,” a dramatic complex of buildings that would eventually be named the Watergate. Cecchi’s employer, Societa generale immobiliare di lavori di utilita pubblica ed agricola (in English, “General Building Society of Works of Public and Agricultural Utility”), was the largest real estate development and construction firm in Italy. In the media, the firm was usually identified as either Società Generale Immobiliare or by its initials, SGI. The largest single shareholder in the firm was the Vatican; four of the 12 directors had close ties to the Vatican, including a nephew of the late Pope Pius XII. Cecchi went to work at SGI’s Milan office and soon landed in the project-planning department of SGI’s headquarters in Rome after university, where he learned about the company’s aggressive plans to expand into the rest of Europe and into North America. He applied for a transfer to the U.S., got it and immediately set about closing deals to prove himself in his new role. “I understand you’re looking for office space,” Cecchi told Oliver. “Come to the Watergate.” Oliver was reluctant. At the time, taxi rates in Washington were determined by the number of zones crossed per ride. The Watergate was two taxi zones away from the DNC’s current office, which meant more expensive cab rides to and from the Capitol. “That’s pretty far from the center of town,” he said. “I don’t know.” Cecchi pressed Oliver to come over and take a tour. They stood in the center of the sixth floor of the office building. There were no walls, just support columns and a sweeping view of the Potomac River. “We’ll design it for you however you want it to be,” Cecchi promised. Oliver sensed Cecchi desperately needed tenants for the new office building. “I’m in negotiations already with a couple other places,” Oliver said. “We can beat any offer you have,” Cecchi insisted. When Oliver got back to the office, he popped in to see Bailey. “I think they’re gonna make us a deal,” Oliver said. Cecchi sent over a proposal. He offered the DNC the entire sixth floor of the Watergate Office Building, with the potential to expand into another floor during presidential campaigns, plus another suite on the ground floor for the new DNC computers. Next door, in the Watergate Hotel, Cecchi included a three-bedroom hospitality suite upstairs, overlooking the Potomac, for only $300 a month. (Separately, he leased a dining room, kitchen and office on the B-2 level for the National Democratic Club.) “We’ll never raise the rent,” Cecchi promised. Bailey took the deal. On April 1, 1967, the Watergate Hotel opened to the public. Hotel rooms—called “apartments” in the press release—could be rented by the month or by the day. Two-bedroom “presidential suites” were available for $900 per month. The Watergate Office Building—“planned and constructed to meet the special needs of Washington’s many trade associations, professional firms, and non-profit and charitable organizations”—opened the same day. According to a press release, the office building was “more restrained in its design” than the hotel and apartments and was the only building “without sweeping balconies.” The Watergate Office Building’s only outdoor space was the terrace on the sixth floor—the new home of the Democratic National Committee. On July 20, 1967, President Lyndon Johnson and first lady Lady Bird Johnson attended the open house at the DNC’s new Watergate offices. Bailey showed the president the basement computer room. Upstairs, Lady Bird Johnson admired the view, but expressed concerns about the 220-foot-high smokestacks that marred the otherwise picture-postcard view of Georgetown from DNC vice chairman Margaret Price’s office. The first lady was in the midst of a national beautification initiative and was happy to learn the unsightly structures were about to come down. Nobody told her a freeway would replace them. Some of the party faithful were “uneasy, even sheepish,” as they tried to reconcile the new offices—with their wall-to-wall carpeting, art-and-tapestry-lined walls, pastel push-button telephones and a “VIP Room” with a built-in sink and refrigerator—with the “Common Man image of the New Deal, the Fair Deal and the Great Society,” the Washington Star reported. “It looks like Republican headquarters,” observed Johnson’s labor secretary Willard Wirtz, only half in jest. “Nothing’s too good for the party of the people,” said Associate Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. One unnamed official said the DNC was able to get the “plush” suite at a good rate because building management had failed to anticipate the robust demand for office space in the new building. Committee staff members had numbers at the ready to defend the move: The new offices contained 20 percent more floor space (5,000 to 6,000 square feet) and cost $7,000 a month—$100 less than the monthly rent on K Street. According to the Miami Herald, “The music is soft and piped. The girls looked like they escaped from a James Bond movie. There’s a great view of the Potomac, too. Real or contrived, happiness pervades the sixth-floor ultra-modern suite.” *** The DNC’s new offices might not have been more expensive than its previous home, but the committee had trouble making its rent anyway. Behind the curtain, the Democratic Party was broke. In March 1970, 18 months after Richard Nixon narrowly defeated Hubert Humphrey to become the 37th president of the United States, Robert S. Strauss was elected treasurer of the DNC and began dealing with a flood of creditors. The DNC’s total debt in 1970 was $9.5 million, including $7 million from the Humphrey primary and general campaigns, and $1 million of the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy’s primary campaign debt. “I would be less than candid,” Strauss wrote one creditor, “if I did not say to you that the Committee has absolutely no funds on hand for debt payment right now.” A 14-page list of DNC creditors, now stored at the National Archives, shows the committee owed General Dynamics Corporation $33,211.14 for office space leased to the Humphrey Committee at 1025 Connecticut Avenue, N.W.; $19,755.15 to the Shoreham Hotel; $33,329.10 to the Waldorf Astoria; $48,246.03 to Emery Air Freight; and $38,477.70 to the Hertz rental car corporation. The National Archives file also shows a balance of $10,452.48 owed to “Watergate Improvement Assoc.,” managers of the Watergate Office Building. Giuseppe Cecchi was Italian by birth, but he considered himself “fully Americanized.” He wanted to send the DNC an eviction notice. “Are you crazy?” a colleague asked him. “McGovern may be the next president of the United States. You don’t want to do that.” But hindsight is 20/20, and Cecchi was overruled. The DNC could stay, he was informed by his superiors, and any past-due rent could be collected after the election. No eviction proceedings were begun. On the morning of Saturday, June 17, 1972, Cecchi received a call from a Watergate manager, who informed him there had been [Note: an alleged] break-in at the DNC’s offices. … The Democrats eventually settled with their creditors. Strauss and DNC Chairman Larry O’Brien established the Democratic National Committee Telethon Trust in 1972 to retire all outstanding debts of the DNC and distribute any excess funds to the committee and to state party committees. The telethon, which took place on July 8 and 9, 1972, netted $2 million. Strauss was able to pay some bills in full. He asked other creditors to accept 25 cents on the dollar. A check for $2,500 was sent to the Watergate on July 18, 1973—by coincidence, the day President Nixon ordered aides to disconnect the White House taping system. Had the Democrats been evicted from the sixth floor of the Watergate Office Building, as Giuseppe Cecchi requested, they presumably would have remained a target of Gordon Liddy, Howard Hunt and the other Watergate burglars—but in some other location. And the Watergate might be known today as a mid-century masterpiece of Italian design—synonymous with luxury and privacy—not scandal. Poster Comment: Joseph Rodota is a writer and political consultant who worked in the Reagan White House and as a top advisor to California governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Pete Wilson. Rodota is the author of The Watergate: Inside America’s Most Infamous Address Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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