Tricky Dick: Watergate Complex

Richard Milhous Nixon Dept: It is the eve of Tricky Dick's 100th birthday when I descend for lunch to a tiny stir-fry salon called Chen's in the basement of the once-elegant, ever-notorious Watergate complex of apartments and offices and a now-abandoned hotel on the shores of the Potomac River, according to Winnipeg Free Press and wASHINGTON -- With a bowl of Chinese noodles at a below-ground Watergate caf , we mark the centennial of the late Richard Milhous Nixon, the great visionary and villain of the American Century, the Cold Warrior who pried opened the doors to Red China and -- illegally -- to Democratic Party headquarters, the only U.S. president ever to resign, but hardly the only one who should have. The eponymous Chen -- reputedly Henry Kissinger's favourite Chinese chef -- no longer runs the restaurant, having passed it 20 years ago to a Korean immigrant named Young Bae who, when I ask if he remembers Richard Nixon, laughs and says, "He was a good leader. He was going to win the election anyway -- why did he need to get involved with Watergate?" (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.