June 22, 2018 Hello ,
Thanks to subscriber and YA Author Jody Casella for tipping me off to this story. It's time to take another look at Martha Mitchell.
It's a first look for me, as my eighth grade self didn't key into this angle of the Watergate crimes. I'd love to
hear from my baby-boomer readers on this one.
Martha Mitchell was accused of being too outspoken, a gossip, a drunk and insane, but in 2018 these labels look mighty suspicious. Her Attacker Got Promoted, and Promoted, Again. Can We Get Him Demoted?
Above, Martha and her husband John Mitchell, attorney general in the Richard Nixon administration.
The bottom line is that Martha was right about President Nixon. He was up to
"dirty tricks" There's no direct evidence he ordered the 1972 Watergate break-in, but he quarterbacked the cover-up, including hush money for the burglars and engaging the CIA to try and throw off FBI investigators.
Nixon himself said, “If it hadn’t been for Martha Mitchell, there’d have been no Watergate.” Scandal, he means. She had nothing to do with the burglary at the Democrat party headquarters in the Watergate building.
Martha
and John Mitchell came to the Nixon white house from Arkansas. She publicly and loudly supported the president during his first term, and continued bashing liberals and communists when her husband resigned as attorney general to
lead the president's re-election campaign.
Martha spoke her mind; the press dubbed her "mouth from the south."
She complained about the label, which wasn’t applied to men in
Washington. “Why do they always call me outspoken? Can’t they just say I’m frank?” The name-calling would get worse. Martha suspected members of the campaign were acting illegally, and she listened in on her husband's meetings with Nixon.
The night arrests in
the Watergate break-in hit the news, she called reporter Helen Thomas of United Press International to say she thought her husband and the president were somehow involved.
The phone call was suddenly cut short. According to Thomas, “…it appeared someone took away the phone from her hand." She heard Martha say, ‘You just get
away.’” Thomas said she called back and the hotel operator told her, “Mrs. Mitchell is indisposed and cannot talk.”
Martha later charged an FBI agent named Stephen King ripped the phone
from her hands and subsequently threw her down and kicked her to keep her from making any phone calls. She says under orders from her husband she was locked in her room incommunicado for 24-hours. She was given alcohol, but no food. This seems like a good point in the story to introduce Stephen King (shown at right). After Nixon was re-elected in 1972, King left the FBI for private industry. Then last year, he was appointed Ambassador to the Czech Republic by Donald
Trump.
During his confirmation hearings, no questions came up about allegations he helped in the Watergate cover-up, or that he assaulted a woman to that end.
Martha Mitchell claimed King held her
prisoner despite a number of escape attempts. When she tried to exit through a glass door they got into a tussle that broke the glass and her hand was cut so badly she required six stitches.
Martha said a doctor was finally summoned to aide King in keeping her a prisoner. King forced Martha onto the bed and held her down while the doctor removed her pants and gave her a shot of tranquilizer.
A reporter who spoke with Martha after she was released described her as “a beaten woman,” with “incredible" black and blue marks on her arms.
As Nixon fought for his office and reputation, his administration briefed the press about the Martha's lack of credibility. She was portrayed as a paranoid, publicity-seeking and, possibly alcoholic, housewife. Rumors spread that she had been institutionalized for insanity. Martha insisted her husband resign from his position as Nixon's campaign director, which he did. Though that did not protect him when the truth of Watergate came
out.
She wanted Steve King fired from the campaign, but he was promoted to chief of security. After leaving the FBI he went on to a lucrative career in chemical
manufacturing.
By
the time Nixon resigned in August of 1974, Martha's marriage had crumbled, she appeared to have possibly had an emotional breakdown and had suffered embarrassing publicity.
Arriving in
Prague, last December, to take up duties as Trump's Ambassador to the Czech Republic, King told Radio Free Europe reporters, "I was there when this matter occurred [with Martha Mitchell]....But I have chosen -- then and now -- not to really speak to it specifically only out of respect to the Mitchell
family, those that survive today."
So far, the only justice for Martha has been in the form of recognition by the mental healthy community. Harvard psychologist Brendan Maher encountered mental patients incorrectly diagnosed as being delusional, when it turned out
their "delusions" were true. He named this the Martha Mitchell Effect. The effect is not a mental problem of the patient, but a mental block on the part of the psychiatrist.
Martha Beall Mitchell died from a rare bone cancer, multiple myeloma, in 1976. On the fifth anniversary of her death, a bust was dedicated in her honor in her home town of Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Beneath the bust, a plaque bears the words, “Ye shall know the truth and the truth will make you free.”
Which is a nice saying with a lot of truth. But freedom is nothing without
justice.
One of my favorite things about having published Pure Grit is that it continually opens the door to people sharing wonderful stories with. I was so touched by this recent story from Cathy, that I want to share it with you.
My parents were in college during WWII, Dad went to the Naval Academy in Annapolis and Mom to the College of New Rochelle. My father was a naval officer after graduation in May/June 1944
and took part in the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
His battleship was hit by kamikazes three different times. When it limped into Bremerton WA for repairs in June 1945 my father wired his fiancée/my future mother in NY and said to come out there so they could get married( they had been engaged for a year, not to marry until my mom graduated from college that June).
Of course all the trains were full of serviceman traveling across the country but my grandfather‘s brother-in-law (my uncle ) owned a Buick dealership and knew a lot of people and he got my mother a ticket to go to Bremerton. She packed her wedding dress in a suitcase with a few things and took the train all the way west, all alone , to join your her fiancé in Bremerton.
When my grandfather gave mom the
ticket, he said “this is a round-trip ticket. So, when you get off that train, if you don’t like the look of him, you just come right back. “
Actually, my grandfather was quite smart because who knew? My father had been on that battleship for over a year and they had been in a few battles including getting hit by those kamikazes, so who knew what changes he had incurred.
But as soon as she got off the train of course the first thing they did was cash in the return trip ticket and they got married and so did a bunch of his friends including his Annapolis classmate and buddy “Shep”.Dad and Shep had been approved for flight training so the newlyweds all traveled to Pensacola FL to learn to be Navy pilots and went through flight training together . BTW “Shep”’s full name was Alan Shepherd. They really were the right
stuff.
Thank you, Cathy, for bringing history alive for us. Until next week... Have you read a great book? Tell me about it. Have a burning question? Let me know. If you know someone who might enjoy my newsletter or
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