40 years on, Watergate crime scene forgotten

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

When the Watergate complex was built in the 1960s, it was just a group of buildings on the western edge of the nation’s capital. Then, 40 years ago today, police in Washington arrested five men breaking into the office of the Democratic National Committee there.

Scandals, from Monicagate to Troopergate, haven’t been the same since.

These days, though, there’s little marking the location of the 1972 crime that ultimately led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. The office building that was the site of the break-in is still in use, though tenants have changed. The adjacent hotel where the burglars stayed is currently closed. And another hotel across the street where a lookout watched the night of the break-in, with a walkie- talkie on hand, has been turned into a college dorm.

Jane Freundel Levey, the chief historian for Cultural Tourism DC, a coalition of city cultural and heritage groups, says there’s talk of installing a set of historical signs in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood where the buildings sit. If that happens, the spaces that played a part in the Watergate drama certainly will be marked, she said.

“We are a nation of people who make pilgrimages,” she said, adding that people like knowing when they’re standing on a historic spot.

Now, however, most tourists visiting Washington head to see the Capitol, the Declaration of Independence, the theater where President Abraham Lincoln was shot and the Smithsonian museums, where interactive exhibits and tour guides await. There’s nothing like that at the Watergate, which sits along the banks of the Potomac River next to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

The site is about a half-mile from the nearest subway station and not on the route of the city’s red, double-decker tour buses. The surrounding neighborhood is full of George Washington University students and federal government workers, but the Watergate is a little farther away.

What visitors get if they make the trek is city dwellers going about their business.

The Democratic National Committee, the burglars’ target, moved out of the Watergate long ago. The group’s offices now are across town, just south of the U.S. Capitol. The sixth-floor office space the committee once occupied now houses the office of the Iraqi embassy’s military attache and a doctor’s office.

A real-estate company that bought the building in 2011 has plans for millions of dollars of upgrades, but half the building currently is vacant.