DATE: Thursday, June 19, 1997 TAG: 9706190430 SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL SOURCE: BY ERIKA REIF, STAFF WRITER DATELINE: HAMPTON LENGTH: 125 lines
The shortest route to finding what's left of Watergate could be through the Phoebus Auction Gallery.
Amid the 25th-anniversary hoopla about the affair that brought down a presidential administration, possibly valuable scraps from the scandal are surfacing with regularity at a small, storefront auction house in Hampton.
For the second time in a month, the Phoebus Auction Gallery, until now known mostly as a dealer of fine art and antique furniture, finds itself offering rare Nixon-era memorabilia. The latest is purportedly the original police report of the break-in at Democratic Party headquarters in the Washington hotel and office complex that mushroomed into ``Watergate.''
Bidding on the report, set for Sunday, will begin at $25,000.
The first Watergate nugget that found its way into gallery owner Gail F. Wolpin's hands was the lock picked by burglars June 17, 1972. A Suffolk man, Jim Herrald, had stored it in a briefcase for nearly a quarter century, trying several times to sell it. On the advice of someone who frequented auctions, Herrald contracted Wolpin to put it on the block last month. He later rejected a $13,000 offer but says he has a higher offer pending.
That transaction proved momentous. In the world of auctioneering, word had gotten out that Wolpin was moving anything that had to do with Watergate.
For a Labor Day auction, she has lined up a ticket to the Nixon impeachment proceedings dated Oct. 7, 1974. Nixon resigned before an impeachment could occur, but someone had stashed a few of the tickets.
Wolpin also will push a copy of ``The Memoirs of Richard Nixon,'' published in 1978 and signed by the former president for a Republican Party member in Williamsburg. She has a thank-you letter written by Nixon's then-secretary, Rosemary Woods, after she was exonerated from accusations that she knowingly erased 18 minutes of material in a crucial tape recording of Oval Office conversations.
And at 1 p.m. Sunday, the police report of the infamous political burglary goes up for sale. About 150 seats can be squeezed into her gallery, which she predicts will be full this weekend.
``When I started this place five years ago, my goal was to make this place regionally and nationally known - and we're working on it,'' Wolpin said. ``This is one of the steps.''
Sunday's auction of the Watergate police report is getting more than just media attention. Washington police officials are trying to stop it.
``We don't give away original reports,'' Washington police Lt. Melanye Smith told The Associated Press earlier this week. Smith is deputy director of the department's records division.
``He knows it's not his,'' Smith said of the man whose identity is being protected by Wolpin.
The mystery man signed the auction contract by fax. Wolpin said she expects to receive a mailed version of his signature plus the report itself before Sunday.
``I think people want to see the real thing,'' Wolpin said. ``I don't want to play with anybody.''
She describes it as the original police burglary report, including a top sheet and bottom carbon with an inside carbon torn out. The middle copy was used by police to transfer the information onto microfiche, says auction house employee Bill Welch.
The owner faxed an unsigned affidavit to Wolpin describing how he acquired the report, she said: He was standing in line at the D.C. Courthouse in June 1972 among police officers turning in paperwork. ``I inadvertently picked up the report (PD 251's all look similar) and included it among my own papers which I took home and filed away. . . . All attempts to return the document failed, and I was forced to decide whether to throw it away, give it away, or keep it for posterity.''
D.C. Council member Jack Evans told The Pilot on Wednesday that neither a police officer, which the affidavit suggests the document's owner could be, nor a civilian should be allowed to sell a police report. Evans is head of the council's Judiciary Committee.
``That's official government property and should remain with the government,'' Evans said. ``It shouldn't be auctioned off. . . . It's probably not legal.
``I imagine whoever has it probably recognized the importance of it and took it.''
Auctioneer Wolpin says she's confident the sale will go on.
Even though she has heard the police are coming.
And she doesn't actually have the document yet.
And she has never seen or spoken with the client she refers to as ``the man in the shadows.''
Meet him?
``I don't know that I ever will,'' Wolpin says. She has been dealing with a middleman over the telephone.
``My job is to sell the thing.''
Like the Watergate lock she is about to close a deal on - this time for a price in the $20,000 range, said owner Herrald.
Herrald, 74, moved to Suffolk about two years ago. But his ownership of the Suite 600 lock goes back to when he was a building superintendent of the Watergate complex several years after the burglary.
The brass lock, 4 pounds and 3-by-3 1/2 inches, had been taped open (as stated in the burglary report) to allow others entry. The burglars were there to photograph Democratic campaign records and check wire taps that had been installed three weeks earlier. The five burglars were arrested that morning, under aliases named in the report.
The next day, June 18, 1972, a local locksmith removed the lock and replaced it. Several years later, Herrald says, the locksmith gave the relic and certification of its authenticity to a friend - building superintendent Herrald.
``I just kept quiet about it for a long, long time,'' Herrald says. He prefers to quote newspaper stories about his remote connection to Watergate, rather than giving details from memory.
``The more you have a story like this down pat, the more it will arouse suspicion in some people,'' he says.
Wolpin understands. And in respecting her more recent client's wish to remain anonymous, she explains: ``Anybody related to this has a hesitancy to talk about this because the whole thing is so secretive.''
But she admits the publicity helps business, as it did after the lock was auctioned.
She is not worried about the buzz of legal questions surrounding her latest find either.
``From what I understand, it was discarded, considered trash.''
And Wolpin says only a court injunction will stop her from offering the police report for sale this Sunday. ILLUSTRATION: WATERGATE'S REMAINS, GALLERY'S GAIN
[Color Photo]
L. TODD SPENCER
Auction gallery owner Gail F. Wolpin: ``When I started this place
five years ago, my goal was to make this place regionally and
nationally known - and we're working on it.''
L. TODD SPENCER
A faxed copy of the Watergate burglary report is shown here. Bidding
on the real report at the Phoebus Auction Gallery will start at
$25,000.
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