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Watergate scandal site, made famous by 'Deep Throat,' set for demolition

Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward met with 'Deep Throat' six times in a Virginia parking garage. Now, this iconic Watergate location is set to host a residential tower and commercial building.

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AP/File
Reporters Bob Woodward (r.) and Carl Bernstein, whose reporting of the Watergate case won them a Pulitzer Prize, sit in the newsroom of the Washington Post in Washington May 7, 1973. In a Virginia parking garage in Washington, D.C., a man dubbed 'Deep Throat' met with Woodward six times to relay covert information about the Watergate break-in.

| Washington

One of the iconic locations of the Watergate scandal will soon be no more.

No, we’re not talking about the Watergate complex itself, where the most famous burglars in American political history broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters on June 17, 1972 – 42 years ago on Tuesday.  Nor is it the former Howard Johnson hotel across the street, from which accomplices monitored the DNC office.

It’s the parking garage in Rosslyn, Va., across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., where a man dubbed “Deep Throat” met with Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward to relay covert information about the Watergate break-in – an incident that grew into a multifaceted scandal. Ultimately, in 1974, President Nixon resigned as he faced impeachment. 

On Saturday, the Arlington (Va.) County Board voted unanimously to allow a developer to tear down the 1960s-era parking garage and adjoining office building and to put up a residential tower and commercial building. But a historic marker commemorating the site will remain. The plaque states that Mr. Woodward met with “Deep Throat” six times at the garage between October 1972 and November 1973.

In 2005, a former top FBI official named Mark Felt revealed that he was “Deep Throat,” a figure immortalized by Hal Holbrook in the film “All the President’s Men.” Mr. Felt died in 2008.

“Felt provided Woodward information that exposed the Nixon administration’s obstruction of the FBI’s Watergate investigation,” says the marker, which was erected near the garage’s entrance in 2011.

Construction on the site is due to begin in early 2017. Arlington County Board members said that they were aware of the garage’s significance, but that it was time to improve the property.

"The Rosslyn of the '70s allowed street-level garage walls and was, in fact, not a very nice place for people,” the board’s vice chair, Mary Hynes, told The Wall Street Journal. “So we will mark the historic nature of the site while creating a fabulous new plaza where people will gather."

The new property will include a 28-story residential building with 274 units and a separate commercial building with office and retail space, according to the Journal.

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