'They called her crazy': Watergate whistleblower finally gets her due

[babylonsister]

‘They called her crazy’: Watergate whistleblower finally gets her due
Martha Mitchell tried to tell the truth about Watergate but President Nixon’s cronies trashed her reputation.
Martha Mitchell, wife of Nixon’s attorney general who ordered the break-in at the scandal’s heart, was drugged and kidnapped
David Smith
David Smith in Washington
@smithinamerica
Sat 2 Apr 2022 02.00 EDT
Last modified on Sat 2 Apr 2022 02.19 EDT


The phone call came five days after the Watergate break-in. Martha Mitchell began telling a reporter that she would leave her husband, former US attorney general John Mitchell, if he did not quit the “dirty business” of politics.

But the conversation ended abruptly and Mitchell was heard shouting: “You just get away – get away!” Then the line went dead. She had been accosted by a former FBI agent and would be forcibly tranquilized and held captive for days.

Mitchell would also see her reputation destroyed by loyalists to the then president, Richard Nixon, because of what she knew about Watergate – dooming her to become one of the hidden figures of the biggest political scandal of the 20th century.

That is now about to change. The 1970s celebrity socialite will next month be played by the Hollywood actor Julia Roberts in Gaslit, an eight-part TV drama co-starring Sean Penn as John Mitchell and Dan Stevens as the White House counsel, John Dean.

more...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/apr/02/watergate-martha-mitchell-whistleblower-gaslit

[samplegirl]

1. Yes I read something

about this. I think it will be good.

[empedocles]

4. Julia Roberts & Sean Penn - should get good exposure

[Auggie]

51. Penn is a terrific actor, but he doesn't look a bit like pasty John Mitchell

Heh -- watch him pull it off perfectly

[empedocles]

55. Ala Brando Godfather

[Auggie]

58. Holy crap (pic of Penn as John Mitchell)

Absolutely amazing

[empedocles]

59. Would not have recognized him of course. However, he is 61, with wrinkles

and bigger, aged nose.

[PatSeg]

60. Wow, that is impressive!

Well, I guess if Christian Bale can play Dick Cheney, then Sean Penn can pull off a John Mitchell impression.

[Auggie]

61. You nailed it

[yardwork]

2. I remember how she was treated. Mocked, abused.

This country needs to take a long hard look at our attitudes toward women.

[niyad]

18. You are quite correct about this country's attitude toward women.

[OldBaldy1701E]

53. This country needs to take a long hard look at our attitude. (n/t)

[Emile]

3. Look like it is on Starz

[underpants]

5. I'd Sean Penn is in it I'm probably watching.

Rock solid ....dude

[msfiddlestix]

6. Oh, I'm gonna wanna see this one. I hope reminders and notices are posted on DU when it's released.

Looking forward!

just fascinating, all the more because all I remember about Martha Mitchell is being scorched in the press quite frequently.


side note: the things of history which have contributed to what would be slammed as a jaded perspective as regards the DOJ and the FBI. The historical record of both agencies does not offer a basis to have faith in their "work product".

Just sayin'...

[Silver Gaia]

52. I have it listed in my calendar as premiering on

Sunday, April 24 on Starz. That is courtesy of Metacritic, which says ”tbd" for time, but I'm guessing 9:00.

[msfiddlestix]

57. thanks. maybe roku will have a special on starz when the time comes.

I'll be on the look out for it. yay.

[Sanity Claws]

7. Her own husband was involved in the trashing

at least implicitly. She was drugged and kidnapped. Can you imagine that your own spouse would get involved in that kind of shit?

[2naSalit]

24. Her husband was the one who orchestrated the kidnapping...

And made the charges the she was crazy. That is a standard for abusers, claim the woman is crazy and take away her rights and her freedom, trash her if she gets away.

She was kind of the opposite of Ginny Thomas.

[Sanity Claws]

26. Wow

What a betrayal of trust. Mitchell was more of a monster than I even dreamed.

[2naSalit]

32. He was.

[ms liberty]

8. I remember it, but I was a kid. It looks good. n/t

[bucolic_frolic]

9. I recall her name and that's about it

But my understanding of Watergate was from scant attention to evening news and newspapers, and the LP National Lampoon's Missing White House Tapes.

[gibraltar72]

10. I remember poor Martha Mitchell.

It is great that her story will be told.

[calimary]

19. And history will be kind.

[llmart]

35. "History will be kind"

That is probably true, but of little solace to Martha Mitchell and those of us who saw Tricky Dick walk away from any punishment. The problem with incidents such as this is that because the crooks and criminals are high powered men, the details are kept hush hush and don't come out until long after the people are dead and the damage is done. Gerald Ford pardoning him made me absolutely furious.

Mark my word. I'm 73 and I highly doubt I'll ever see all the truths about the evils of the war in Iraq, 9/11 or the entire trump family's criminal deeds, nor will I ever live to see them do time for those deeds. Maybe my grandchildren will 50 years from now. Maybe they'll get to watch a made for TV movie.

[calimary]

42. Right behind you, my friend.

It strikes me as in incredibly unfair that Martha Mitchell will only get the admiration and recognized vindication LONG after she’s gone.

And she sure took some shit while she lived and showed such courage to speak out. Really embodied the “speak truth to power” concept.

[2naSalit]

25. +1

[ificandream]

11. Here's the trailer

&ab_channel=STARZ

[niyad]

16. Just. . .wow!!!

[2naSalit]

27. Can't wait to see that!

I can get that channel on a live stream.

Thanks!

[ificandream]

12. In the middle of listening to Garrett Graff's recent book on Watergate.

The author doesn't take up a crusade on Martha, but he does talk about the struggle she went through with her husband. I will look forward to seeing this movie, though.

[tavernier]

13. I love STARZ.

They have a variety of worthy films like Milk and Mrs Brown, etc. Netflix and Prime and HBO keep flogging old romcoms that scored a D- when they were released.
Being an Outlander follower I keep STARZ even when the show is between seasons.

[Silver Gaia]

54. I do the same.

😉

[childfreebychoice]

14. Saw preview on YouTube, looked very good. I remember reading somewhere

that her kids stopped speaking to her

[Hekate]

41. She had a 13 year old daughter who was poisoned against her. Martha, dying of cancer, didn't even

…get to see her child.

That stuck with me — the monstrosity of those men.

[intheflow]

15. Compare to Ginni Thomas...

I have no real comparison to offer, except the obvious one: class vs. trash.

[2naSalit]

28. +1

She's like the opposite of GT.

[niyad]

17. I remember it all.

[SharonAnn]

46. So do I. Aghast at what said was done to her, I believed her.

[xxqqqzme]

50. As do I

Wasn't a nixon conversation with mitchell recorded and discovered? Nixon telling mitchell to get his wife under control? I seem to remember something discovered once the tapes were released.

[betsuni]

20. K&R

[McKim]

21. Calling Her Crazy!

Yes, calling her crazy is a common form of sexist bullying. When confronted with an uncomfortable truth, the perpetrator will say that the woman is crazy, discounting her ideas and words. It was common in the past for some women to be put in mental institutions by family when they were inconveniently telling truths or complaining about ill treatment. Martha Mitchell's story is a classic example!

[efhmc]

23. Especially if that person is a woman.

[2naSalit]

30. +1

Seen it first hand. It really accelerated after the MM events.

[efhmc]

22. I remember my mother saying, "Look Margaret Mitchell was right."

[Mr. Ected]

29. Hopefully a lot of people will extrapolate something from this

And apply it to modern day politics. There's so much at stake, so much to lose, so much malfeasance. If the crime doesn't get you, the cover-up will.

The GOP hasn't changed a whit. If anything, they're more vile and snide. We need to fix what Gerald Ford broke. We need to try the culprits and throw all their asses in prison, from henchman to President.

[2naSalit]

31. Nothing else is acceptable.

Period.

[Mr. Ected]

36. Watergate was a test run and we failed

If J6 and the 4 years that preceded it don't give rise to an ex-President behind bars, not only did we not learn a thing from Watergate, we will look back and say that we sacrificed democracy by applying democracy without common sense.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

[2naSalit]

38. Nothing has been done...

About Nixon, Reagan, Bush, or Wcheney and it brought us to near ruin because of it. Something HAS to happen this time or it's game over for the US of A.

[2naSalit]

39. +1

[childfreebychoice]

43. Sadly, not one journalist has confronted rethug with their plan for lowering food/gas

Prices. And even when everything cont to skyrocket, voters will hand them the keys back in 24.

[mushroomhunter]

48. so right

thank you

[deminks]

33. The press here painted her as an alcoholic, drug abuser

As well as crazy. I remember it well. And they never spent any time clearing it up after they all went to jail. All but tricky dicky, that is.

[Samrob]

37. I remember her treatment well. ss well as the treatment of black security guard who discovered

tape on the door latch and reported it to the police. Wonder if that will be in the film also?


_Frank Wills (February 4, 1948 – September 27, 2000) was a security guard best known for his role in foiling the June 17, 1972, break-in at the Democratic National Committee inside the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. Then 24, Wills called the police after discovering that locks at the complex had been tampered"

[moniss]

40. I am happy to see that she is not forgotten by some

and I was a young adult at the time. Sometimes the context of the times is important to understand why so much of the country was willing to accept and mock what happened to her.

By 1972 the social protests/anti-war movement had been a hard slog but we were making some headway. As activists we were still pushing hard and were reeling from the shootings at Kent State and Jackson State barely 2 years before. Those investigations were still ongoing and the GQP crooks were in full swing in trying to "make it all go away" with media pals and distraction. Much of the country wanted to believe that the things they had feared weren't really true. But it was true. American soldiers on our streets had openly murdered student protesters. A lot of America wanted to "move on" from the horrors of Chicago 1968, the Pentagon Papers, social protest etc. They wanted to believe Kissinger and the cabal. They didn't want to know about Chile and Central America etc. They wanted it all to go away. A third rate actor would use this desire later to declare "Morning in America".

So when Watergate began to come to light the GQP got busy trying to blow it all off as nothing but a "prank" so to speak. Much of America was happy to go along with that. They had been hearing accusations of criminal activity for years and they were tired of it. So the subject of Watergate dragged on and was not given much attention by average Americans early on. This is the period when Martha tried to tell us what had been going on. I remember well all of the mocking and Johnny Carson making jokes about "drunken Martha" calling people in the middle of the night. So America went on and the investigation and hearings likely would have come to a standoff of accusation and denials until the witness Alexander Butterfield told the committee about a taping system in the White House for recording conversations. So the famous fight for the tapes began but that was a year after Martha had been grabbed, beaten and drugged at the behest of Nixon and his people.

Those of us who were fighting on the left were not surprised by the depths to which their criminality would go. I firmly believe they would have killed her and anybody else if they felt they had to. Look at their conduct in other countries. The treatment of Martha is one of the reasons why the pardon of Nixon and minor sentences for others for obstruction and perjury were so galling to those of us who fought against these people. The "minor penalties and get off free pardon" are mainly responsible for the GQP crooks becoming more emboldened year after year and resulting in the brazen law breaking/corruption seen in Iran-Contra, the Iraq War and the current mess which resulted in the most serious domestic assault on our democracy since the Civil War.

So when we who lived through the horror of Nixon the first time around see the almost nonchalant treatment of the insurrectionists it is like PTSD for many of us who fought to get people to see how serious and awful these things were. The frustration and the tears come back in waves as we remember giving up our futures to fight the draft, go underground, endure estrangement from loved ones, fight for voting rights, fight for housing, fight for the environment and all the rest. How could it not? But much of America wants to forget.

Imagine the terror Martha must have felt as they beat her and then Nixon's lawyer shows up and demands she be heavily tranquilized and taken away. Every second of that terror is what was felt in this country and around the world by so many during every second for years during the reign of these crooks.

[DoBotherMe]

47. Yesss!

[Pepsidog]

44. Republican criminals just being Republican criminals. Nothing ever changes.

[Justice matters.]

49. Yep. They're only in it for the money.

And the power that comes with lots of dirty money.

[Joinfortmill]

45. Wow. Good timing.

[Silver Gaia]

56. Metacritic says Gaslit will premiere on Sunday, April 24 on Starz.

It also has this to say about this film:

Adapted from season one of the Slate podcast "Slow Burn," the Sam Esmail-produced Gaslit retells the story of the Watergate scandal with an emphasis on some of the lesser known figures involved. (In theory, it's yet another anthology series, with yet-to-be-ordered future seasons to focus on other events.) The star-filled cast includes Julia Roberts (as socialite Martha Mitchell), Sean Penn (as Attorney General John Mitchell), Dan Stevens (as John Dean), Betty Gilpin (as Mo Dean), Shea Whigham (as G. Gordon Liddy), Allison Tolman (as journalist Winnie McLendon), Patton Oswalt (as Nixon advisor Chuck Colson), Hamish Linklater (as Mitchell assistant Jeb Magruder), Chris Bauer (as Watergate burglar James McCord), Nat Faxon (as Bob Haldeman), Chris Messina (as FBI agent Angelo Lano), and J.C. MacKenzie (as E. Howard Hunt). The adaptation comes from writer/producer Robbie Pickering (a veteran of both Mr. Robot and Search Party). With the Watergate break-in nearing its 50th anniversary, you can expect more Watergate-themed content to come in the near future, including HBO's The White House Plumbers miniseries (which will find Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux starring as Hunt and Liddy, respectively).

https://www.metacritic.com/feature/tv-premiere-dates

[Kid Berwyn]

62. Good.

J. Edgar Hoover, Martha Mitchell, Minnie Pearl, and John Mitchell at a dinner honoring Martha on May 24, 1971. Hoover was under siege. On March 8, activists broke into an FBI office in Media, PA and stole thousands of pages of FBI documents that revealed not only surveillance of the Left, but criminal acts committed against it, including sabotage, arson, perjury, and worse, under a program called COINTELPRO. Within days documents were sent to the national media, underground newspapers, radical groups, several members of Congress, and individuals who were being watched and/or investigated. On March 24 John Mitchell issued an urgent plea to the press not to publish information from the documents. In April Senator Muskie strongly denounced domestic surveillance of activists and proposed a domestic intelligence review board. Rep. Hale Boggs called for Hoover’s resignation. FBI agent Mark Felt wrote that this event was “the turning point in the FBI’s image.”

Source: https://www.necessarystorms.com/home/the-silencing-of-martha-mitchell