Camp David: A Palatial Retreat

When Anwar Sadat signed the guest book at Camp David's presidential house, Aspen Lodge, he was checking in at the world's most exclusive and elaborate political retreat. A 30-min. helicopter ride from Washington, which is 75 miles to the southeast, Camp David is a 143-acre compound of more than a dozen buildings, perched on a 1,880-ft. hilltop in Maryland's Catoctin Mountains. The heavily wooded setting, teeming with deer and raccoon, blue jays and snowbirds, and an occasional pileated woodpecker, provides Presidents a spot for total seclusion. Sadat's visit last week marked the 20th time that a foreign chief has joined in that peace and quiet--Churchill's five trips were the most numerous.

As befits such guests, Camp David boasts the kinds of services that could make King Solomon envious. Operated with military efficiency by about 100 Navy men and Marines, it can provide almost anything a President might want: a free-form heated swimming pool, a sauna, two clay tennis courts, a one-hole, three-tee golf course, a two-lane bowling alley, a trout stream, skeet-shooting and archery range, movie facilities, a wide selection of music (Richard Nixon used to stand in front of the stereo speakers and "guest conduct" his favorite symphonies fortissimo). Comments former Nixon Counsel John Dean: "It has a rustic feel but no rustic hardship. If Baked Alaska is what you want, Baked Alaska is what you get."

Along with all the diversions, Camp David also provides--at the bottom of an elevator shaft sunk 100 ft. into the mountain--a fortress where the President could repair in time of war. Even in peaceful times, security is tight. Rifle-bearing Marines keep watch behind a double row of barbed-wire-topped fences.

Built in 1939 by the Civilian Conservation Corps and Works Progress Administration, the camp was originally called Hi-Catoctin. Franklin D. Roosevelt renamed it Shangri-La (after the Himalayan paradise in James Hilton's bestseller of that era) when he chose it for his summer retreat. As F.D.R.'s son Elliott Roosevelt recalled, the camp at that time "looked more like a Marine training camp made up of rough pine cabins, but it suited Father down to the ground--metal bed, bathroom door that refused to shut tight, bare walls ornamented only with some of his favorite cartoons."

Harry Truman hardly used the camp at all, preferring a Key West retreat. For President Eisenhower, though, the setting was so special that he renamed it in 1953 after his five-year-old grandson.

When Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was first told that his 1959 itinerary included a stay at Camp David, he was mystified. In Khrushchev Remembers he said, "I couldn't for the life of me find out what this Camp David was. I was afraid this was ... the sort of place where people who were mistrusted could be kept in quarantine. Finally we were informed that Camp David was what we would call a dacha." His amiable talks with Ike on disarmament and the future of Berlin produced what was known as "the spirit of Camp David."

The Kennedys kept Jackie's and Caroline's horses stabled at Camp David, but the President was at first a reluctant visitor. The family was planning a private country home in Virginia. Only as J.F.K. began using the Government retreat more did he finally ask, "Why are we building Atoka when we have a wonderful place like this for free?"

The L.B.J. Ranch was a little too far away for regular visits, so Lyndon Johnson used to chopper off to the camp with three or four friends in tow. He also found the retreat an ideal locale for some Viet Nam War jawboning with skeptics like Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson. Recalls L.B.J. Aide Jack Valenti: "It was a frosty meeting, but they parted friends. There's something about Camp David that makes you feel softer."

Safer is more the way Richard Nixon viewed it. Turning the hideaway into a virtual hideout during the Watergate era, Nixon would spend long hours in his favorite armchair next to Aspen's massive central fireplace, with legal pads on his knee, trying to explain away the crisis.

Before his Watergate days, Nixon used Camp David to draft many of his important speeches. In his first term alone, Nixon made nearly 120 trips to the camp, refurbished Aspen into a posh home and converted the cluster of other cabins into a mini-White House. Nixon also added new cabins to the grounds, one of which was used by Daughter Tricia and Edward Cox on their honeymoon. Tricia aptly called it a "resort hotel where you are the only guests."

Nixon sometimes offered the retreat to others--to Henry Kissinger to ponder the state of the world and to John Dean to whitewash the state of the coverup. Dean, like his boss, found Camp David conducive to "hard reflective work. It's as close to being away and still being plugged in as anything the Government has."

Jimmy Carter, too, is a private person, and about once a month he has found that Camp David perfectly suits his need to get away from the Capital.

Last week he and his first foreign guest were offered among other things a sampling of new movies, including one that Carter has lately seen several times, Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.