The garage where Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward met Deep Throat, his secret Watergate source, will be demolished to make way residential and commercial buildings.
The five members of the Arlington County, Va., Board voted unanimously over the weekend to approve the plan in the Rosslyn neighborhood. A statement on the county's website noted that a marker will be erected at the site to commemorate its historic significance.
The project isn't new. We reported last year on the plans to tear down the two buildings at 1401 Wilson Blvd and 1400 Key Blvd. the process is expected to take another two years, and demolition is unlikely to begin before 2017.
The garage below the buildings was where Woodward met with Deep Throat, his secret source on the Watergate break-ins who was eventually revealed to be Mark Felt, a senior FBI agent. They met six times at spot 32D.
Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who together worked on the Watergate story, were on Morning Edition last week. Here's a primer from the show on the events that led to President Nixon's resignation in 1974:
"It all started in the Watergate hotel and office complex in Washington."In June 1972, on the sixth floor, the headquarters of the national Democratic Party became a crime scene. Men planted listening devices inside the headquarters, and then burglars trying to maintain those devices were caught inside the Watergate. ..."Working for The Washington Post, the two men slowly connected the burglary and other political crimes to the re-election campaign of President Richard Nixon. They won a Pulitzer for their reporting."
On Morning Edition, Woodward said the key to their reporting was how they approached their sources.
"This was a strategy that Carl developed: Go see these people at home at night when they're relaxed, when there are no press people around," he said. "When the time is limitless to a certain extent and you're there saying, 'Help me. I need your help,' which are the most potent words in journalism. And people will kind of unburden themselves, or at least tell part of the story."
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