While his cronies raided the Democratic Party headquarters, Alfred Baldwin kept watch from room 214 of the hotel across the street in case the police arrived. Fifty years later, the Hotel Watergate allows its guests to relive the most notorious political scandal in the United States in that room.
Renamed What "Scandal Room" (Scandal Room), everything inside evokes the failed espionage operation orchestrated by the re-election campaign of the then President Richard Nixon (1969-1974), which led to the resignation of the Republican two years later. It was in this place where Alfred Baldwin, a former FBI agent linked to the plot, got distracted on the night of June 17, 1972 watching television and did not notify his companions that a patrol had arrived. An error for which the president would end up falling. Priced around $1,500 a night, the fourth "offers a unique experience for those who want to see with their own eyes where orchestrated the Watergate coup", The general manager of the hotel, the Spaniard Manuel MartÃnez, tells Efe.
"Customers are attracted by the scandal that originated here", adds the director as he travels through space, immortalized in fictions such as "All the President’s Men", "Forrest Gump" either "Gaslit".
the perfect balcony
The word Watergate, which everyone associates with the fall of Nixon, is actually the name of a complex of buildings erected between the 1960s and 1970s in Washington, on the banks of the Potomac River, which they house luxury apartments, offices and the homonymous hotel.
There are hardly ten meters of separation between the semicircular balcony of the "Scandal Room" and the windows of the offices that at that time were run by the Democrats and that today are the headquarters of companies and law firms.
"From the balcony of this room you can see, directly opposite, where was the headquarters of the Democratic Party", Martinez says. It was, therefore, the perfect place for Baldwin to act as a lookout while Virgilio González, Bernard Barker, James McCord, Eugenio MartÃnez and Frank Sturgis sneaked into the Democratic headquarters to set up microphones. But the plan had cracks.
"Two police officers responded to calls for someone who saw suspicious activity late at night. Those people were detained there and another one here, in the hotel"says the director. Half a century later, all kinds of objects carefully selected by the prestigious British designer Lyn Paolo, such as a typewriter, an old safe and a red leather sofa, take the room back to that time.
a trip to the past
Nixon would have had a hard time falling asleep here, because everything is reminiscent of the twilight of his political career, including a wall-mounted copy of his resignation letter, signed on August 9, 1974. There are also a dozen press covers for the history as the famous "Nixon Resigns" ("Nixon resigns") from The Washington Post, and others from The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Life and Newsweek. It is not for less, since the work of the press was key so that the raid, which was initially considered a case of robbery, led to a political trial against Nixon and his resignation. Most prominent was the investigation by Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who revealed attempts by the White House to cover up the scandal thanks to a tip-off from a source they dubbed "deep Throat" and whose identity, that of retired FBI agent Mark Felt, would be revealed decades later.
This trip to the past was undertaken last Thursdayon the 50th anniversary of the events, a British man who stayed in the room and whom MartÃnez defined as "fan of contemporary United States history". Despite the aura of intrigue that surrounds the place, guests’ privacy is guaranteed in the "Scandal Room". Manuel promises that the only microphone that has entered the room is the one used for the interview.