The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate

by James Rosen

  I returned a few days later, again in mid-afternoon, and this time my knock was answered by a large black woman in a white uniform, who appeared to be a nurse. As I stood in the hall, eleven-year-old Marty came down the apartment’s stairs. She was in pajamas and looked as if she had not been outside in the sun for months. As the woman turned toward the child, I heard the clink of metal and noticed a large key ring attached to her belt. “I want to go in my mommy’s room,” said Marty. “Would you open the door so I can see my mommy?” The woman shook her head. “I’ve told you over and over. You can’t see your mother until she wakes up.”

  Again the door was shut in my face, but not before I saw the look of anguish on the child’s face. The curtains were tightly drawn, and the interior of the apartment was in deep shadows. Whether the nurse had locked Martha in her bedroom or Martha had locked herself in, I did not know. But I later learned that one of the main items of regular “housekeeping” in the apartment was to repair or replace Martha’s bedroom door. She would often lock herself in, and when threats were ineffectual, John Mitchell instructed the chauffeur to kick the door down. I didn’t like to dwell on what this was doing to Marty.10

  Why did Mitchell marry Martha in the first place? The chronology suggests their relationship began as an extramarital affair; presumably, then, the initial attraction, for Mitchell, lay in adultery’s usual draws: sex, excitement, illicit adventure. A source close to Mitchell confirmed, many years later, what the FBI had learned during its background check on him in 1968: that Martha was pregnant when they married. The two made an odd couple—he in pinstripes, pipe, and wingtips; she in bouffant wigs, costume jewelry, and stilettos—and recalled Katharine Hepburn’s famous commentary on Astaire and Rogers: “He gave her class, she gave him sex appeal.”

  Mitchell’s staid exterior and resemblance to Alfred Hitchcock made it difficult to conceive of him in sexual terms at all, let alone as an edgy character. But a few saw past the Wall Street façade. Among them—working backward, in deduction, from the presence of Martha—was William F. Buckley Jr., the conservative commentator who knew the attorney general well enough to have introduced him, in 1968, to Henry Kissinger. “A bond dealer!” Buckley began his eulogy for Mitchell in National Review. “It was part of the grander design that John Mitchell should have had that profession, and that face. He looked like the Anonymous Man, clerking his time away until the Social Security payments began. And all the while, in private life and in public, he was a picaresque figure. Anyone married to Martha Mitchell had to be, in hidden life, one true gay blade.”

  Since tales of Martha’s erratic behavior date back to the early sixties, Mitchell must have recognized early on in their marriage the severity of his second wife’s mental and emotional problems; it was this recognition that gave him pause before he finally capitulated to Nixon’s pleas to serve in government. He stayed with her, most likely, because they had a child together and he wanted to avoid visiting upon Marty the same dislocation that afflicted his children from his first marriage. His divorce from Bette Shine had also been expensive. Finally, there was some evidence, after his death, that he carried on another affair—at least one—after marrying Martha.

  A family member once said Mitchell was intellectually brilliant, “but not when it came to women.” Still others saw Mitchell’s consuming devotion to work as the central problem in his relationships. “Martha was very family-oriented,” Mitchell’s brother, Robert, recalled in 1998. “John was always busy with his success…. I think the only problem with Martha was that as [John] got more and more, you know, successful…she was apparently left alone a lot and I guess she took to alcohol, that’s all. And she had the weakness, and she became an alcoholic. But Martha wasn’t always that way.”11

  Watergate was the final strain that pushed Martha over the edge. The bloody altercation in Newport Beach and the escalating shrillness of her calls to reporters in the spring of 1973 signaled the encroaching darkness that was to cloud her remaining days. Erratic, even dangerous behavior Mitchell, in private practice, was able to police—like the time when his wife, like some malevolent cartoon character, sprang from a concealed position in their apartment and, without provocation, smashed a chair over the head of one of Mitchell’s law partners, or the occasion, far more chilling, when she got hold of a gun and trained it menacingly on Marty.

  Now, however, indicted and struggling to stay out of prison, Mitchell could no longer manage his wife’s madness. With the twin terrors of the Watergate scandals and Martha Mitchell, no man, no matter how strong, could cope; a change had to be made.

  On September 11, 1973, with Marty safely ensconced at boarding school in Connecticut, Mitchell finally walked out on Martha, taking whatever he could carry, including an alarm clock, to the Essex House on Central Park South. Eight months later, on May 10, 1974, Martha initiated formal divorce proceedings, accusing Mitchell in court papers of “cruel and inhuman treatment and abandonment.” Mrs. Mitchell—she kept the name—also sought legal advantage by reminding the court of her ex-husband’s “leadership” role in “the Watergate break-in and cover-up.”12

  In his legal papers, Mitchell argued Martha had “disregarded her duties and obligations as a wife” and behaved “in such a manner as to justify” his leaving her. In a private letter he railed at “that sick [expletive] that has caused so many problems for Marty and me.” Throughout the summer of 1973, he told the court, his efforts to prepare for the Vesco trial were hampered by Martha’s “unstable condition, [her] refusal to sleep during the night, and harassment during the day.” Worse, her “frequently…excessive alcohol intake” left her “unfit” to care for Marty, in whom she “instilled fear…subjecting her to harassment both at school and while visiting friends, and upon occasion, to physical abuse.”13

  In the annals of divorce, the dissolution of the Mitchell marriage, and the competing child-custody and property claims it engendered, surely rank among the longest, nastiest, costliest, and most painfully public of the media age. The drama played out in New York State Supreme Court, on local and national television, in the newspapers, and occasionally—as when Martha set fire to her ex-husband’s most cherished items and dumped the rest in their foyer—violently. Coupled with the two criminal trials and multiple investigations he faced, the character assassination raining down on him from every newsstand and anchor desk in the nation, Mitchell’s divorce represented still another front in his seemingly boundless struggle for survival.14

  Despite her later claims to have been shocked at Mitchell’s departure, Martha appears to have anticipated his move and taken preemptive action to blunt its impact. The previous July, the Mitchells had hired Soll Connelly and Marshall, a Park Avenue law firm, to assist in transferring ownership of their Fifth Avenue co-op to Martha, a move likely triggered by Mitchell’s indictment in the Vesco matter two months earlier. But with the sting of the Newport Beach needle still fresh in memory, their marriage obviously failing, Martha, according to previously unpublished documents, secretly contacted Soll Connelly and requested “the advice of a firm other than Mr. Mitchell’s law firm, so she could be sure her interests were protected.” She knew the end was near.

  Five days after Mitchell stole away in the night, Martha told Helen Thomas he had left on advice of counsel. “He walked out, yes,” Martha confirmed. “But I’ve been trying to get him out. If you’ve got a man twenty-four hours a day, I couldn’t stand it. He was watching the football games. I’m so glad he’s out of here. Anyone who sits here and never goes out, and never accepts invitations.”15

  Soon, however, Martha realized she was entirely ignorant of the family finances and unable to perform even the most elemental administrative tasks necessary to maintain her (costly) existence. “For seventeen years of her marriage to the defendant,” her lawyers later argued, “she was accustomed to a certain style of living and the security that went with it.” Her security, the lawyers frankly acknowledged, derived from “having had the luxury of p
eople taking care of her personal needs and financial needs all of those years.” When Mitchell left, he “took with him all the security that the plaintiff may have had, and the plaintiff was left on her own without being aware or knowing which way to turn to take care of any personal matters.”16

  But Mitchell, according to court papers, testified that he left behind

  not only my clothing and various photographs, but all of my personal effects…books, papers, records…two to four file cabinets of personal materials…twelve binders of newspaper clippings and documents…voluminous papers relating to the hearings before the Senate Select Committee on Watergate, and the trial in the Southern District of New York, United States v. Vesco, et al [sic]…many bound and loose-leaf volumes containing complete records of various trials and hearings which were important to me…testimony before various congressional committees, private papers within the Justice Department, extensive personal correspondence accumulated during the years of private practice and with the government…speech materials…bank statements…various valuable pieces of jewelry…autographed pictures from several former presidents of the United States; various gifts bearing the presidential seal; [and] golf clubs.

  Few of these items, including Mitchell’s official papers and correspondence from his years as attorney general, were ever recovered.17

  Mitchell’s legal bills, meantime, were going through the roof. The lopsided terms of divorce in the 1970s, in which men were invariably held liable for all fees and debts their ex-wives incurred—combined with Martha’s particular talent for spending—quickly laid waste to the fortune Mitchell’s innovations on Wall Street had earned him. It was now clear that, as one of Martha’s lawyers noted, “both parties are obviously going to have to cut back in their means of living.” Mitchell offered to provide Martha with “a gracious and comfortable existence” amounting to $350 a week, which was in addition to his assumption of responsibility for “all [her] household and personal costs…charge accounts, credit cards, travel, entertainment and medical expenses.” In their first year of separation, he paid her $51,500, about $215,000 in current figures.18

  But by the time his Watergate trial commenced, in October 1974, Mitchell’s patience, and bank account, had run out. He told the court Martha had “abused” his “largesse,” that due to “changed circumstances” and “severe debt obligation,” his “continuing ability to sustain [her] payments is now at an end.” Far from exercising the “expected self-imposed limitation” on her spending, Martha was burning Mitchell’s money faster than ever. Her monthly phone bills averaged $400 ($1,700 in current dollars), her dry-cleaning tab up to $600 ($2,500 today). On one occasion she stuck him with the bill for an Amtrak seat, along with the cost of three surrounding, unoccupied seats, to “insure her privacy.” She also demanded Mitchell absorb the cost of her personal secretary, a luxury she never enjoyed during their marriage.19

  Though it pained him to bare such matters in public documents, Mitchell was forced to provide the court with detailed accountings of his rapidly diminishing finances. His income of $5,281 per week, he explained, consisted of weekly payments of $5,000 from Mudge Rose—an arrangement “based solely on an informal agreement, subject to termination at any time,” he warned—and $281 from accrued interest on municipal bonds. Mitchell then detailed his weekly expenditures: $630 for payments on an unsecured joint loan of $112,000; another $530 for insurance premiums; $500 for a Chase Manhattan Bank loan; $480 for carrying charges on the Fifth Avenue co-op, now occupied solely by Martha; $275 for interest on loans he took out against his insurance policies, worth a total of $257,000; and some $200 on various other charges. Then there was poor little Marty, whose tuition and board ran $3,600 a year, not counting clothing and medical needs. Finally, and not least of all, Mitchell had to bankroll his four-and-a-half-room dwelling at the Essex House; his own living expenses; a car and driver who performed “general household duties” for him; and all his and Martha’s taxes.

  Additional details emerged, however, in pleadings by Mitchell’s attorney, Marvin Segal. While acknowledging Mitchell’s “total assets” were “appreciable,” Segal cautioned they were “encumbered” and did “not actually represent a financial picture…as generous as [Martha] claims.” Segal maintained that “any negative result in the District of Columbia,” where U.S. v. Mitchell was under way, would devastate the former attorney general’s “viability as a wage earner.” Already, he had shelled out $90,000 for lawyers’ fees (almost $380,000 in current figures), an exigency that had necessitated “further borrowing.”20

  Mitchell’s continuing alimony payments to his first wife, two decades after their divorce and notwithstanding Bette’s remarriage, filled Martha with rage, and formed the basis of still another of her legal challenges. “It is a rather peculiar situation,” her lawyers argued, “where the defendant [Mitchell] will be paying…more alimony to his first wife who has remarried than to his present wife who is totally without funds.” Segal shot back that Martha seemed to have forgotten that the unusually steep alimony payments imposed under the terms of Mitchell’s first divorce “[had to] be accepted in order that the marriage to [Martha] could be undertaken.” Segal pleaded for the court to recognize the “almost certain eventuality” that Mitchell would go broke and to help the former attorney general avert “financial disaster” by forcing Martha to sell the Fifth Avenue property. Instead, on December 4, 1974, New York State Supreme Court Judge Manuel A. Gomez ruled Mitchell had to pay Martha a whopping $1,000 a week, retroactive to November 1.21

  Despite the increasingly hostile tone the proceedings had acquired by the end of 1974, Mitchell calculated it would still be financially advantageous for him and Martha to file a joint tax return for the preceding year. Ironically, 1973 had shaped up as one of the most lucrative years of Mitchell’s legal career: Despite his indictment in the Vesco case in May, and his grilling before the Senate Watergate committee in July, Mitchell racked up $302,000 in fees, working mostly out of his old Broad Street office.

  Without advising Mitchell, however, Martha had already filed her own tax return, attaching to her 1040 form a pitiable note she scrawled on yellow legal paper:

  I may have other income which is taxable. I do not know the amount of this income. My husband has always prepared our joint income tax returns.

  After being persuaded they could save $25,000 by filing jointly, Martha finally relented. The former attorney general signed their joint return and sent it off to the IRS on August 12, 1974, four days after Richard Nixon resigned the presidency. For Mitchell, these were unbearably dark days; indeed, the Internal Revenue Service soon informed him he was being audited.22

  While her father stood trial in Washington, Marty Mitchell commuted between boarding school in Connecticut and the Essex House, where they spent weekends together. Only in “sporadic instances” was Marty looked after by others, Mitchell argued in court, and in such cases the supervisory figures were “old family friends” or “parents of contemporaries.” The child herself, he said, had “repeatedly expressed the desire to be with [him], and specifically not be under the aegis of [Martha Mitchell].” On the few occasions where she saw her mother in those days, Marty rebuked her for causing Mitchell so many problems: “It’s your fault that Daddy’s in trouble.”23

  Certainly the most sensational charge in the saga of the Mitchells’ divorce was Martha’s claim of physical abuse at her ex-husband’s hands. In court papers she charged that Mitchell, on or about November 1, 1972, “punched [her] with a clenched fist in the mouth, causing great physical discomfort, pain and disfigurement.” Winzola McLendon recounted the incident in her 1979 biography, Martha. “Soon after dinner on November 1, my telephone rang. It was Martha.”

  “Winnie, come help me,” she screamed. “Please help me!” “Where are you?” “The Watergate! Hurry!” I heard her shout at someone, “Yes! I called Winnie and she’s coming over!” The phone went dead.

  My husband, Navy Captain John Benjam
in McLendon, drove me to the Mitchells’ apartment. I went up alone and John Mitchell answered the door. He looked terribly annoyed. With his uncombed hair and flush face, his white dress shirt opened at the neck and the tail partly out, he also looked like he’d been in a brawl. The shirt was wet, too. But I couldn’t tell if it were from perspiration or if something had been thrown at him.

  I asked, “Where’s Martha?” He answered by calling to her, “Your friend is here.” Martha, her face tear-stained and blotched, walked down the stairs, wearing slacks and a rumpled sleeveless overblouse that didn’t hide large red marks on her arms. “Well, I’ll leave ‘you two girls’ alone,” John Mitchell said, sarcastically, before stomping up the steps. Martha said, “Thank you, Winnie, for coming,” and started to cry. Only then did I see that one of her front teeth was out.

  “I wanted to get her out of there,” McLendon wrote, but Martha said no: “Just stay with me until I know he’s sound asleep.” Asked why she stayed with Mitchell if he beat her, Martha replied, “I have to.” Mitchell hadn’t exactly punched her tooth out, she explained: “The tooth isn’t out. It’s the cap he knocked off. All of my teeth are capped. John Mitchell didn’t like my teeth from the day he met me. He made me have them capped.”

  With Martha’s consent, McLendon summoned her husband, the navy captain, and the three talked for four hours, calming Martha down. During this time Martha placed several unanswered calls to an unidentified friend “in suburban New York” (possibly Ken or Peggy Ebbitt in Bronxville) and confided she was “scared to death” Mitchell was going to institutionalize her. By midnight she was feeling “all right,” rejecting pleas she stay at the McLendons’, or that they stay with her; in fact Martha “insisted we go,” McLendon recalled.24