John Dean wonders how much Martha Mitchell knew about Watergate since a documentary about her scores for Oscars

John Dean doesn’t remember the exact date more than 50 years ago when he first met Martha Mitchell, but he does remember his impressions.

“The Attorney General [John Mitchell] lunches every Wednesday for senior staff, of which I was a part. He would have them in his large conference room at the Department of Justice. And often Martha was there,” recalled Dean, a former White House counsel under President Nixon and a key figure in the Watergate cover-up. “She was always a bright light in every room she walked into. She was alive, she was smart.”

There was a time, even before she became something of a Watergate whistleblower, when seemingly all of America knew Martha Mitchell. The Arkansas charmer with the bulletproof beehive haircut charmed audiences with her remarkably outspoken manner, but that very quality of refusing to keep quiet would have dire consequences, a story that unfolds in the Oscar-nominated short documentary The Martha Mitchell Effect.

“We thought it was really a hidden character in the story and there was never a documentary about her,” says Anne Alvergue, who co-directed the Netflix film with Debra McClutchy. “At the time we were hot on the heels of Trump and two impeachments and the MeToo movement. We thought it was the perfect time to tell her story, to dig up her story.

The directors do this with the help of people who met Mitchell, including Washington Post’s Sally Quinn and Bob Woodward, journalist Connie Chung, former Nixon aide Dwight Chapin, and Dean, who knew her from Holy of Holies. Wing. Dean says Nixon and all the president’s men looked at Martha with amusement at first.

“I think everyone liked it when she first arrived. And the press was so drawn to it because it was a story, it was a great story. She was not the norm in Washington,” Dean told Deadline. “She was not the quiet cabinet lady in the corner, but this very outspoken character who was the beauty of every ball.”

Mitchell appeared on the talk shows of Dinah Shore and Merv Griffin, among others, and even verbally abused himself Rowan & Martin’s laugh soon with Lily Tomlin as the nosy operator Ernestine. Martha, perhaps more concerned about the White House, has shown a tendency to call reporters and share her unabashed opinions, especially UPI’s Helen Thomas. She didn’t stick to an approved script.

“She’s always a nuisance,” Nixon complained in a phone call recorded on his secret White House recording system. “It scares me. I just can’t take it.”

Dean remembers the change in attitude of the president and those around him toward Mitchell.

“What happened was that Nixon’s relationship with Martha developed,” he notes. “When Watergate happened, it took a darker turn.”

water gate Martha Mitchell’s name will forever be linked to the scandal that brought down Nixon. But Dean, who shared his knowledge of the cover-up with investigators and made the case for his Watergate role, wonders how much damn inside information she really possessed.

“I don’t know how much Martha knew or didn’t know. I suspect very little,” says Dean, “because John Mitchell was always very careful when he talked about any of these sensitive issues around her. I was told by [former Nixon aide] Fred LaRue, who was once very close to Martha, says if you call John when you call his house, you can bet Martha will probably pick up a second phone and listen.

Ironically, the Mitchells lived in the Watergate building. What is indisputable is that on the night of the break-in — June 17, 1972 — when burglars were caught at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, Martha and John were on the West Coast attending a Nixon fundraiser. After learning of the arrests, John Mitchell immediately returned to Washington, but left his wife in California and urged security personnel to keep her away from newspapers reporting the break-in.

Martha finally called Thomas and told the UPI reporter that she was being held captive by her husband’s henchmen. The phone went dead — Mitchell later said guards ripped the device from the wall. She said a doctor called to her room knocked her unconscious with a sedative. (Dean thinks there’s more to it, telling Deadline: “From what I understand [accounts] was that she put her fist through a window and was just out of control. And that’s why they gave her the shot to calm her down. She was angry that John had left.”).

Speaking widely to reporters about her alleged prison sentence, Mitchell went much further—she became arguably the first prominent Republican to accuse the government of complicity in Watergate. The documentary – using evidence from White House tapes – argues that Nixon and his chief of staff HR Haldeman responded with a conspiracy to ruin Martha Mitchell’s credibility. The media, fueled by stories from the White House, portrayed her as mentally unstable and drunk.

“It’s important to hear Martha’s story and what happened to her and the gaslighting campaign that was used against her,” says McClutchy. “I think it gives a more complete picture of history and reflects what has happened since then, but also the recent history of politics and especially the gaslighting campaigns against women.”

In an excerpt from Nixon’s famous interview with David Frost, the disgraced former leader says, “I am convinced that without Martha there would have been no Watergate.”

“One of the things that was very common in the White House was scapegoating,” Dean notes. “No one always takes responsibility. It’s always the other person’s fault. So blames Martha. I think a lot of that went through Nixon’s analysis. He breaks down Nixon’s self-justification in this way, imagining him thinking, “Well, I’m not going to hire or rely on someone stupid enough to first break into Watergate, or second, not effectively cover it up.” only to give to Martha. “the guilt.”

There can be little doubt that she was collateral damage in the Watergate scandal, that her reputation was destroyed, that her relationship with her husband was destroyed. John Mitchell was jailed in 1977 for his role in Watergate; A year earlier, Martha Mitchell died of cancer at the age of 57.

“That’s one of the things that the documentary explains well, that there’s this larger-than-life character here,” says Dean, “who influences the story because of her position, her husband’s position, and her lack of tolerance for politics. The documentary more or less shows that it is quite difficult to suppress someone who wants to tell and speak the truth.

He adds: “I’m excited for the documentary because I think the producers behind it told a story that needed to be told.”