SHERO THREAD, MARTHA MITCHELL EDITION (dedicated to @SuzanneWinland and @HillObscuresVu) and the many brave women of the Trump era.
Martha Mitchell was married to John Mitchell, a NY lawyer who became the Nixon campaign director and then United States Attorney General under Nixon. He was in charge of the Committee to Reelect the President (CRP) when Watergate was hatched and unfolded.
She became quite famous for being a DC Socialite who SPOKE HER GODDAMN MIND to the press. They lived at the Watergate. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Mi…
Rose to prominence telling press that "that Washington DC peace demonstrations held in November 1969 reminded her husband of a Russian revolution." (oops).
I don't entirely trust the drinking part, because it was used against her later, but "She had the custom of having an evening drink, and then calling reporters with political gossip or information she has gleaned while rifling through her husband's papers or eavesdropping."
Mitchell "made regular appearances on talk shows and variety shows. By the following year, in November 1970, a Gallup poll indicated that 76 percent of Americans recognized who she was, and she made the cover of Time in an issue about the most influential women of Washington"
During the 1972 campaign, she began to tell her press contacts that "the campaign had engaged in "dirty tricks" to win the election."
When Watergate break-in broke, she was in CA, but "learned that...McCord, the security director of the CRP and her daughter's bodyguard and driver, was among those arrested.[this conflicted w/ WH] story that the break-in was unrelated to the CRP, and raised her suspicion"
She called Helen Thomas of United Press said planned to "leave her husband until he resigned from the CRP. The phone call, however, abruptly ended. When Thomas called back, the hotel operator told her that Mitchell was "indisposed" and would not be able to talk."
H Thomas heard Mitchell say "You just get away" and that the phone taken from her hand. "A few days later, ... New York Daily News, tracked Mitchell to the Westchester Country Club....Marcia Kramer found "a beaten woman" who had "incredible" black and blue marks on her arms."
"Mitchell related how in the week following the Watergate burglary, she had been held captive in that California hotel ...After several attempts to escape... she was physically accosted by five men, which had left her needing stitches, and forcefully sedated by a psychiatrist."
Ugh: "Despite the fact that the Watergate scandal was the leading story across all news formats, her reports were relegated to human-interest stories in major newspapers, including The Times, The Washington Post, and The New York Daily News."
YOU GO: "She was also outspoken about the corruption in the GOP....Nixon was later to tell interviewer David Frost in 1977 that ... "If it hadn't been for Martha Mitchell, there'd have been no Watergate."
So three goddamn cheers for MARTHA MITCHELL. American Patriot. Bottoms up.
