Kathleen Chenow

Kathleen Chenow was the secretary whose name concealed a telephone link between the White House complex and the Plumbers. When reporters traced the number, she identified the unit, described its leak investigations, and explained how the phone had been used—turning an obscure name in a legal record into a route toward the operation’s structure and contacts.

Identity and Position

Chenow’s name appeared in a legal agreement covering telephone, travel, and bank records connected to the Watergate defendants. The agreement showed that a telephone had been installed on August 16, 1971, in room 16 of the Executive Office Building at 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, and disconnected on March 15, 1972. It was listed under Chenow’s name and home address in Alexandria, Virginia. The name did not appear in the phone book. Bernstein used a crisscross directory to locate a former roommate, learned that Chenow had moved to Milwaukee, and reached her there.

Chenow explained that she had been David Young’s secretary, though the phone had been put in for her to answer and take messages for Howard Hunt. Young was on loan to John Ehrlichman’s staff from Henry Kissinger’s office. The Plumbers’ office was in the Executive Office Building basement, across from the White House; Young reported regularly to Ehrlichman on the unit’s investigations, and Egil Krogh was one of Ehrlichman’s principal deputies.

The Plumbers and Their Work

Asked what the Plumbers were, Chenow gave a direct account: the group consisted of Hunt, Gordon Liddy, Young, and Krogh. They investigated leaks to the news media and reported to Ehrlichman. The work began with a study comparing the New York Times version of the Pentagon Papers with the original documents, then shifted to finding how the papers had leaked. Chenow said the inquiries also extended to State Department leaks: investigators checked embassy cables and tried to determine whose desks they had crossed. Much of the Hunt work she saw involved State Department cables concerning the Pentagon Papers.

Her position gave her a view of the operation’s routine communications, not necessarily its full decision-making. She described the telephone as Hunt’s line and said its use was limited: it rang about once a week, sometimes two or three times in a week, with most calls occurring between August and November. Hunt called Bernard Barker, and Chenow recalled that the two were familiar with one another on the phone. Hunt sometimes spoke Spanish to Barker, although Chenow did not speak Spanish herself. She remembered Hunt calling Barker and Barker’s wife; Liddy may also have used the line to speak with someone Hunt had called. By the time the telephone was removed in March, it had not been used for a long while.

The Disguised Telephone and Its Significance

The number’s location inside the Executive Office Building made its registration under a private individual’s name significant. Asked why a telephone in the White House complex would be listed to someone in Alexandria rather than use the complex’s communications system, Chenow said it apparently had been placed in her name because its users did not want ties to the White House. She did not know the reason beyond that. Her account thus established both the disguise and its limit: the arrangement obscured an institutional connection, but she could not say who had ordered it or explain the decision further.

Chenow’s importance in the investigation came from the specificity of what she could identify. The records had supplied a date, room, and name; her testimony connected the number to Hunt, named the Plumbers and their reporting line, and described the unit’s original leak-hunting work. She did not present herself as the architect of those investigations. Instead, her role as secretary and message-taker made her a witness to the practical details through which reporters could begin to reconstruct a concealed White House operation.