The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate

by James Rosen

  Patricia Hass introduced me to my unbeatable literary agents, Lynn Chu and Glenn Hartley. At Doubleday, editor in chief Bill Thomas, executive editor Adam Bellow, and editorial assistant Dan Feder all showed extraordinary understanding, patience, and skill. Peter Collier helped chop down the 500,000-word behemoth. Without these literary professionals, this book would not exist; however, any errors contained herein are, of course, solely my responsibility.

  Any good thing I’ve ever done reflects the love and selflessness of my parents, Regina and Mike Rosen, to whom this book is dedicated. My big-hearted older brother, Eric Rosen, has given me more than I could ever begin to thank him for, including my fascination with the sixties; thanks, too, to Eric’s wife, Dalene, and their children, Charles and Hannah. My in-laws, Lorraine and Joseph Durkin, along with Ryan Durkin, Jen Barron, and Quinn Durkin, have supported me in innumerable ways.

  My long-suffering wife, Sara Durkin, has learned more than she ever needed to know about John and Martha, Haldeman and Ehrlichman, and she has, in return, taught me everything I know about Vern Yip, Stuart Weitzman, and—far more important—life, love, courage, and grace. Someday when we’re dreaming, Aaron will understand it all.

  James Rosen

  Washington, D.C.

  February 2008

  NOTES

  ABBREVIATIONS

  AOP Stanley I. Kutler, Abuse of Power: The New Nixon Tapes (Free Press, 1997).

  BLAT Baldwin Los Angeles Times interview. Interview of Alfred C. Baldwin III conducted by Jack Nelson, October 3, 1972.

  CCT Church Committee testimony; testimony of John N. Mitchell, October 24, 1975, reprinted at Hearings Before the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities of the United States Senate, Ninety-fourth Congress, First Session, Volume 4: Mail Opening (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976).

  CCTF Campaign Contributions Task Force of the WSPF.

  CI Colodny interview; interviews by Leonard Colodny, conducted 1985–1991, and introduced as evidence in Maureen K. Dean and John W. Dean v. St. Martin’s Press, Inc., et al., Civil Action No. 91–1807 (1992). CI interviews are with John Mitchell unless otherwise indicated in brackets.

  CRP Committee for the Re-Election of the President.

  DOJ Department of Justice.

  DVS Maureen K. Dean and John W. Dean v. St. Martin’s Press, Inc., et al., Civil Action No. 91–1807 (1992).

  DVSCM Dean v. St. Martin’s Colodny Motion. Declaration of Leonard Colodny in Support of Motion for Partial Summary Judgment, [filed] December 16, 1996.

  FBIM FBI files on John and Martha Mitchell, obtained by the author through the Freedom of Information Act.

  FG Federal Government; NARA document classification code.

  HHBP Howard H. Baker Jr. Papers; Special Collections, University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

  HJC House Judiciary Committee volumes; Hearings Before the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, Ninety-third Congress, Second Session (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1974).

  HJCFR Impeachment of Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States: The Final Report of the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives (Bantam, 1975).

  HJCW House Judiciary Committee witness testimony volumes; Hearings Before the Committee on the Judiciary, Testimony of Witnesses, House of Representatives, Ninety-third Congress, Second Session (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1974).

  HN Haldeman Notes; yellow-pad notes of H. R. Haldeman, 1969–1973, basis for The Haldeman Diaries.

  HW Handwriting; annotations by President Nixon on papers in his office files (POF), available at the Nixon Presidential Materials Project, National Archives.

  JDD John Dean deposition; sworn testimony of John W. Dean in Maureen K. Dean and John W. Dean v. St. Martin’s Press, et al., C.A. No. 92–1807.

  JDE John D. Ehrlichman; used in citing documents obtained through NARA.

  J-L Judicial and Legal; official organizational grouping for documents obtained through NARA.

  JMRC Jill Mitchell-Reed Collection; assorted documents once belonging to John Mitchell now in the possession of his daughter and provided to the author.

  KCH Kleindienst Confirmation Hearings. Hearings Before the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Ninety-second Congress, Second Session, on Nomination of Richard G. Kleindienst, of Arizona, To Be Attorney General (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972).

  KI Kutler interview; transcripts of interviews with John Mitchell by Stanley Kutler, conducted in 1988, made available to the author.

  MACT Moreland Act commission testimony; testimony of John N. Mitchell before the New York State Moreland Act Commission on the Urban Development Corporation and Other State Financing Agencies, October 15, 1975.

  MFC Mark Feldstein Collection; documents compiled by author Mark Feldstein in connection with his work on a biography of Jack Anderson and provided to the author.

  MPP Mitchell Probate Papers; In Re: Mitchell, John N., Superior Court of the District of Columbia, Probate Division, Adm. No. 0908–89, [filed] 2/8/90, [dismissed] 11/3/92.

  NARA National Archives and Records Administration.

  NARD Nelson A. Rockefeller documents; letters from Rockefeller to Mitchell contained in Rockefeller Family Archive, Record Group 15, Nelson A. Rockefeller, Gubernatorial Series 16, Fifty-fifth Street, Subseries 3, Correspondence Files, Box 15, Folder 226, NAR Letters to John Mitchell, 1970–1972; Rockefeller Archive Center, New York.

  NARR Nelson A. Rockefeller records; Letters from Rockefeller and his aides to Mitchell contained in Rockefeller Family Archive, Record Group 15, Nelson A. Rockefeller, Gubernatorial office Records (microfilm); Name File, Reel 213, Rockefeller Archive Center, New York.

  NT Nixon tapes; author’s transcript from White House tapes available at the Nixon Presidential Materials Project, National Archives.

  POF President’s Office Files; available at the Nixon Presidential Materials Project, National Archives.

  RG Record Group of the National Archives and Records Administration. RI Reichley interview; interviews of John Mitchell and other Nixon administration figures by A. James Reichley, conducted 1969–78, available at the Gerald R. Ford Library, Ann Arbor, MI.

  SECF Securities and Exchange Commission Files; documents in SEC’s Robert Vesco case file obtained by the author through the Freedom of Information Act.

  SJC Senate Judiciary Committee.

  SSC Senate Watergate committee volumes; Hearings Before the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, Ninety-third Congress, First Session (U.S. Government Printing office, 1973).

  SSCEX Senate Select Committee executive session. Sworn testimony in executive session before the Senate Watergate committee, obtained by the author using the Freedom of Information Act.

  SSCFR Senate Select Committee’s final report. Final Report of the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1974).

  SMOF Staff Member and Office Files, available at the Nixon Presidential Materials Project, National Archives.

  THD H. R. Haldeman, The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House (Putnam, 1994).

  TPOP Seymour M. Hersh, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House (Summit, 1983).

  UMS Trial transcript of U.S. v. John Mitchell and Maurice Stans (73 CR439).

  UVL Trial transcript of U.S. v. George Gordon Liddy, et al. (CR 1827–72).

  UVM Trial transcript of U.S. v. John N. Mitchell, et al. (CR 74-110).

  WCHC William C. Herman collection; several hundred pages of documents, including tax returns for John Mitchell and/or his law firm from 1950 to 1973, made available to the author by a New York attorney who represented Martha Mitchell during divorce proceedings against her husband.

  WGTF Watergate Task Force of the WSPF.

  WHCA White House Communications Agency.

  WHCF White House Central Files, available at the Nixon Presidential Materials Project,
National Archives.

  WHSF White House Special Files, available at the Nixon Presidential Materials Project, National Archives.

  WHT White House Transcripts: The Full Text of the Submission of Recorded Presidential Conversations to the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives by President Richard Nixon, Gerald Gold, ed. (Bantam Books, 1973).

  WI Wells interviews; transcripts of interviews by Tom Wells, conducted 1985–87, made available to the author.

  WSPF Watergate Special Prosecution Force; documents from WSPF files obtained by the author through the Freedom of Information Act.

  WVL I Ida Maxwell Wells v. G. Gordon Liddy (I), Civil Case JFM-97-946, U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, Northern Division, January 2001.

  WVL II Ida Maxwell Wells v. G. Gordon Liddy (II), Civil Case JFM-97-946, U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, Northern Division, 2002.

  Note: Where abbreviations in footnotes are followed by roman and arabic numerals, the roman numerals refer to a volume number, the arabic numerals to page numbers within that volume. Thus “SSC, II: 579–81” refers the reader to pages 579 through 581 in the second volume of the Hearings Before the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities (the Senate Watergate, or Ervin, committee).

  PROLOGUE

  1. John Lukacs, The Hitler of History (Vintage Books, 1998), p. 1.

  2. Michael Dunne, “John Mitchell Jets to Ala. & Becomes Con 24171–157,” New York Daily News, June 23, 1977; “John Mitchell Is Jeered as He Enters Prison,” Washington Post, June 22, 1977.

  3. Fred Emery, Watergate: The Corruption of American Politics and the Fall of Richard Nixon (Touchstone, 1994). Emery claimed (p. 487) Mitchell’s offer to plead guilty in exchange for the prosecutors’ abandonment of Nixon was first disclosed in a 1994 BBC documentary on which Emery worked. In fact, Mitchell’s bold proposition was first reported sixteen years earlier; see Ronald J. Ostrow, “Mitchell Offered to Take Coverup Blame to Protect Nixon, Former Prosecutor Says,” Los Angeles Times, August 11, 1978.

  4. William S. White, “John Mitchell: Dividing the Men from the Boys,” Washington Post, July 14, 1973; Nicholas von Hoffman, “Keeping the Code of Omerta,” Washington Post, July 16, 1973; Robert Sam Anson, Exile: The Unquiet Oblivion of Richard Nixon (Touchstone, 1985), p. 214.

  5. Mary McCarthy, Mask of State: Watergate Portraits (Harvest, 1975), pp. 53–67; Whitney North Seymour Jr., United States Attorney: An Inside View of “Justice” in America Under the Nixon Administration (W. Morrow, 1975), p. 73; Stanley I. Kutler, “Covering Up the Cover-up,” Times Literary Supplement, July 19, 1991; Mark Rudd, interview with author, May 12, 2004; John Osborne, The Second Year of the Nixon Watch (Liveright, 1971), p. 11; “Quiet Voice: Business Suit,” The Nation, April 20, 1970; Peter Goldman, “Mr. Law-and-Order,” Newsweek, September 8, 1969 (Bickel); Richard Harris, Justice: The Crisis of Law, Order and Freedom in America (Avon, 1970), cover (Wicker) and p. 203 (signal). Osborne later had a change of heart, writing in December 1974 that Mitchell “in some respects…was a better-than-average attorney general” see Osborne, The Last Nixon Watch (New Republic Book Company, 1975), p. 8.

  6. Brenton Harries, interview with author, November 3, 1994; Robert Odle, interview with author, April 17, 1993; Kenneth W. Thompson, ed., The Nixon Presidency: Twenty-Two Intimate Perspectives of Richard M. Nixon (University Press of America, 1987), p. 295 (Raoul-Duval); Martin L. Gross, “Conversation with an Author: John Dean,” Book Digest, March 1977; Statements of Senate Judiciary Committee Members on the Nomination of Erwin N. Griswold to be Solicitor General of the United States, Wednesday, October 11, 1967, cited in WH memo for John Ehrlichman from John Dean, Subject: Suggestions of Items to be Covered at 2:30 p.m. Meeting Re Kleindienst Confirmation Hearings, March 8, 1972, WHSF—SMOF, JDE Subject File, Antitrust, Box 15, NARA (Kennedy); Erwin N. Griswold, Ould Fields, New Corne: The Personal Memoirs of a Twentieth Century Lawyer (West Publishing, 1992), pp. 270–72, 315; Cornell W. Clayton, The Politics of Justice: The Attorney General and the Making of Legal Policy (Sharpe, 1992), pp. 100, 138 (partisan instrument); Nancy V. Baker, Conflicting Loyalties: Law and Politics in the Attorney General’s Office, 1789–1990 (University Press of Kansas, 1992), p. 122 (rule of law). Clayton wrote: “After the Justice Department’s involvement in the initial [Watergate] cover-up was made public, Attorney General Mitchell and his successor, Richard Kleindienst, were forced to resign.” In fact, Mitchell left office voluntarily on March 1, 1972, almost four months before the cover-up began.

  7. “Mitchell, Last Watergate Prisoner, Is Freed on Parole,” New York Times, January 20, 1979; Christopher Booker, The Seventies: Portrait of a Decade (Penguin, 1980), p. 79. Books on Martha Mitchell include Amram Duchovny, On With the Wind: The Sayings of Martha Mitchell (Ballantine, 1971); Charles Ashman and Sheldon Engelmayer, Martha: The Mouth That Roared (Berkley Medallion, 1973); and Winzola McLendon, Martha (Random House, 1979). She was also the subject of Minnie Pearl’s full-length comedy LP, My Husband Doesn’t Know I’m Making This Call (Sunflower Records, 1971) and an off-Broadway play; and her childhood home in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, was made into a museum. In 1996, Martin Scorsese reportedly contracted to serve as executive director of a film about Martha.

  8. Lester A. Sobel, ed., Post-Watergate Morality (Facts on File, 1978), p. 17.

  9. J. Robert Mitchell, interview with author, February 26, 1998.

  INTO THE FIRE

  1. J. Robert Mitchell, interview, February 26, 1998.

  2. Kenneth Gross, “John and Martha: Growing Up American,” Newsday, May 23, 1970.

  3. Record of Birth, John Newton Mitchell, State of Michigan, Department of State—Division of Vital Statistics, Registered no. 12273, September 5, 1913; “Biography of Attorney General John Newton Mitchell,” [undated] DOJ press release; and J. Robert Mitchell, interview with author, August 8, 1998.

  4. Jill Mitchell-Reed, interview with author, May 5, 1992.

  5. J. Robert Mitchell, interview with author, February 9, 1998.

  6. Ibid., February 26, 1998. Though unsure of his father’s date of birth, Robert said the date of death was January 18, 1948, at approximately sixty-six years of age; this would place the date of birth of the attorney general’s father around 1882.

  7. Ibid., February 9, 1998. The New York Post incorrectly reported Mitchell’s father “had been in the trading stamp business with his brother” see Rita Delfiner and William H. Rudy, “The John Mitchell Story: From Jamaica to Wall Street,” New York Post, August 4, 1970 (emphasis added).

  8. J. Robert Mitchell, interview, February 26, 1998.

  9. Mitchell-Reed, interview, May 5, 1992.

  10. J. Robert Mitchell, interview, February 9, 1998. Jill Mitchell-Reed claimed McMahon was somehow involved in Tammany Hall, but no authoritative accounts of the corrupt political machine that ruled New York City in the 1860s and 1870s mention his name, and her uncle Robert dismissed the notion as “hot air.”

  11. Mitchell-Reed, interview, May 5, 1992; and J. Robert Mitchell, interview, August 8, 1998.

  12. Ann Mitchell, “A Personal View of the Attorney General of the United States John N. Mitchell,” [undated; c. 1970]. The only known attempt at a Mitchell family history, this informal essay was written by Robert’s daughter, Ann, as a school project; although it contains some inaccuracies, it is still a valuable source of information on the Mitchells’ lineage and on the attorney general’s early life. Ann died in 1986; see letter to the author from Joseph C. Mitchell, August 25, 1994.

  13. J. Robert Mitchell, interview, February 9, 1998.

  14. Ibid. Though Joseph and Margaret Mitchell’s date of marriage is lost to history, the conventions of the era make it likely they wed before conceiving their first child, Joseph Charles (“Scranton”). Robert recalls Scranton was five years older than himself, and born on the Fourth of July; this places Scranton’s birth date as July 4, 1909. Thus Joseph and Margaret likely wed sometime in 1908.

  15. Ib
id.

  16. Ibid., February 26, 1998.

  17. Ibid., February 9, 1998.

  18. This photograph appeared on the front page of the Long Island Advance on July 19, 1973. Though no credit was given, the photograph was probably taken by a member of the neighboring Slechta family, which contributed two other contemporaneous photographs to the same edition.

  19. Ibid.

  20. Mitchell, “A Personal View” Robert B. Martin, “Att’y. Gen. John Mitchell Lived in Brookhaven Tn.,” Long Island Advance, July 19, 1973.

  21. J. Robert Mitchell, interview, February 26, 1998.

  22. Fawn M. Brodie, Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character (Harvard University Press, 1983), p. 45 (brutal); Delfiner and Rudy, “The John Mitchell Story” (drive).

  23. Daily Calendar of the President’s Engagements, Saturday, February 11, 1928, in Papers of Irwin H. Hoover, chief usher at the White House, Library of Congress.

  24. Malcolm Wilson, interview with author, May 12, 1993.

  25. A partial transcript of Mitchell’s appearance on The Dick Cavett Show on September 10, 1970, along with Klein, HEW secretary Robert Finch, and Leonard Garment, appears in John J. Makay and William R. Brown, eds., The Rhetorical Dialogue: Contemporary Concepts and Cases (Wm. C. Brown, 1972), pp. 37–57.

  26. CI, May 21, 1988.

  27. Jill Mitchell-Reed, interview with author, November 22, 2003.

  28. Susie Morrison, interview with author, January 16, 1992.

  29. Letter to Bette Shine “M.D.” from [John Mitchell], “Sunday” [post-marked August 12, 1937]; JMRC. Mitchell joked his letter would be “more damaging than a written proposal of marriage to a chorus girl.”

  30. Thomas W. Evans, “A History of the Firm,” Mudge Rose Guthrie Alexander & Ferdon: Alumni Directory 1994, p. 33. One account of Mitchell’s law career placed this moment after his graduation from law school, but before his admission to the bar. Yet Mitchell once said he was “the youngest lawyer in the firm” at the time, suggesting he had both graduated and been admitted to the bar; see Lyle Denniston, “He’s No ‘Gang-Buster’ Type,” Washington Evening Star, December 31, 1968, and James B. Stewart Jr., with Joan Kenyon, “Bond Counsel: New Race for the Riches,” The American Lawyer, November 1979.