Watergate Secret Meeting Phone

The Watergate Secret Meeting Phone was a telephone installed in room 16 of the Executive Office Building for E. Howard Hunt, but listed under the name and home address of Kathleen Chenow in Alexandria, Virginia. Its disguised subscriber and billing arrangements concealed its White House connection; Chenow’s account and telephone-company confirmation later tied the installation to John Ehrlichman’s office. The phone became more than a curious line in a set of records: it was a physical trace of the Plumbers’ work and of the effort to keep that work institutionally separate from the White House.

Installation and discovery

The phone first emerged through a confidential copy of a legal stipulation obtained by Lawrence Meyer, a city-desk reporter covering the federal courthouse. The twelve-page agreement, prepared by prosecutors and defense attorneys for the seven Watergate defendants ahead of their January 8 trial, covered telephone, travel, and bank records accepted as accurate. Among the details the reporters found was a line installed on August 16, 1971, in room 16 of the Executive Office Building, at 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. The service was disconnected on March 15, 1972, and the subscriber was recorded as Kathleen Chenow, with an Alexandria home address.

There was no Kathleen Chenow in the phone book. Bernstein used a cross-reference directory to locate her, discovering that she had moved to Milwaukee, and contacted her there. Chenow had been the secretary assigned to the White House Plumbers. Rather than leave the telephone entry as an unexplained anomaly, Bernstein asked her what the line was for and whom it served. Her account established that it was Hunt’s phone: it had been put in for her to answer and take messages for him.

Concealment and use

The listing separated the telephone from its actual setting. Asked why a phone in the White House complex would appear under a private individual’s name and address, Chenow said that those arranging it apparently did not want the line tied to the White House. She did not know the reason for the arrangement. The evidence establishes the deliberate use of her identity to obscure the connection, but does not establish every participant’s purpose or what was said in the calls.

The bills followed the same indirect route. They were mailed to Chenow’s home, and she forwarded them to John Campbell, an aide in Ehrlichman’s office, so that the White House would pay for the service. Chenow said the arrangement had apparently been made by Hunt, David Young, and Gordon Liddy, who had spoken with Campbell about handling the bills. The distinction between the named subscriber and the office ultimately paying for the telephone made the concealment legible: the line appeared private on paper, while its costs were routed back to the White House.

Chenow recalled that Bernard Barker was the principal caller. The phone rang about once a week, sometimes two or three times in a week; Hunt and Barker spoke familiarly, and Hunt sometimes spoke Spanish. She remembered Hunt calling Barker and Barker’s wife, but no one else. Liddy might sometimes have used the phone to speak with someone Hunt had called, whom Chenow thought was probably Barker. Most calls came between August and November. By the time the line was removed on March 15, it had not been used for a long while. Her recollections describe a limited pattern of use, not a complete record of the conversations or their contents.

The line within the Plumbers’ structure

Chenow identified the Plumbers as Hunt, Liddy, Young, and Egil Krogh. Their work was to investigate leaks to the news media and report to John Ehrlichman. Chenow was technically Young’s secretary; he had been loaned to Ehrlichman’s staff from Henry Kissinger’s office. She also recalled a meeting in Krogh’s office attended by Hunt, Liddy, Robert Mardian, and several people she did not recognize, and said Young used to speak with John Mitchell, though she did not know what about or how often.

The telephone therefore sat within a broader office network, but the specific evidence about it is narrower than the Plumbers’ full activity. Chenow described Hunt’s use of the line, Barker’s recurring calls, the occasional possible use by Liddy, and the billing path through Campbell. Separately, she identified the Plumbers and their leak-investigation function. Taken together, these details placed a disguised communication line inside the White House complex and connected it to personnel involved in the Plumbers, without showing that every Plumbers operation was conducted through that phone.

Corroboration and public significance

Chenow’s account also included what happened after she had left the White House staff on March 30, 1972. She was in Europe when the Watergate arrests took place. About two weeks later, John Dean’s assistant, Fred Fielding, found her in Birmingham, England, and asked her to return, explaining that the White House was speaking with the FBI and that she would be questioned about the telephone and her work. On the flight back, Fielding tried to bring her up to date with a Time magazine and asked whether she knew anyone in its articles about the break-in. Chenow said she recognized Hunt.

After her return, Chenow reported to Dean’s office and was interviewed by the FBI. Dean, Fielding, and Young sat silently while she was asked about her role and whether she knew of the bugging; she later met with Watergate prosecutors and testified before the grand jury. The morning after Bernstein completed his account, Woodward called Jack Harrington, the Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Company official responsible for White House service. Harrington confirmed that Ehrlichman’s office had ordered the phone and arranged its unusual billing system, which he said was the first of its kind he had encountered in twenty-five years.

Bernstein’s resulting story combined the secret installation, Chenow’s identification of the Plumbers, and her account of the interview with Dean. The White House declined comment, citing the upcoming trial. The story left open why Hunt’s official duties would require a camouflaged listing and why Ehrlichman’s office would approve the service, but it put the underlying arrangements into public view. Its importance lay in the convergence of a dated telephone record, a named secretary’s firsthand account, and independent confirmation from the telephone company: together, they made the hidden connection harder to dismiss as an inference alone.