The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate

by James Rosen

27. Eleanora W. Schoenebaum, ed., Profiles of an Era: The Nixon/Ford Years (Harcourt, Brace, 1979), p. 261 (near-genius); SSC, VII: 2872; Verne A. Stadtman, “The Centennial Record of the University of California” (University of California Press, 1967).

  28. Thompson, The Nixon Presidency, p. 76; KI, February 9, 1988.

  29. KI, February 9, 1988 (S.O.B.); Schoenebaum, Profiles of an Era, p. 184; John Ehrlichman, Witness to Power: The Nixon Years (Pocket Books, 1982), pp. 2–22.

  30. Ehrlichman, Witness to Power, pp. 56–57; Kleindienst, Justice, p. 48 (carefree); Robert Mardian, interview with author, August 2, 1993 (crowd).

  31. CBS Morning News, October 6, 1966 (Robert F. Kennedy); Theodore H. White, The Making of the President 1968 (Atheneum, 1969), p. 138.

  32. Witcover, The Resurrection, pp. 311–13 (EI Supremo); Herbert G. Klein, Making It Perfectly Clear (Doubleday, 1980), pp. 12–13. Klein also recalled (pp. 12–13) groggily taking a call in his villa at midnight and hearing “a woman…screaming into the phone, demanding to speak to John Mitchell. The tone was so high and the words so distorted,” he continued, “that I was embarrassed to have answered the phone…. That was my midnight introduction to Martha Mitchell.”

  33. Goldman, “Mr. Law-and-Order” Nixon, RN, pp. 382–83.

  34. Klein, Making It Perfectly Clear, p. 29 (thorough); Lewis Chester, Godfrey Hodgson, and Bruce Page, An American Melodrama: The Presidential Campaign of 1968 (Literary Guild, 1969), p. 458; Harry S. Dent; The Prodigal South Returns to Power (Wiley, 1978), p. 95.

  35. Chester, Hodgson, and Page, An American Melodrama, pp. 461–63; Dent, The Prodigal South, pp. 97–98.

  36. “Nixon Said to Bar Southerners’ Bid: Shuns Pledge on Choosing Conservative for Ticket,” New York Times, August 7, 1968 (consistent); and Glen Moore, “Richard Nixon: The Southern Strategy and the 1968 Presidential Election,” in Leon Friedman and William F. Levantrosser, eds., Richard M. Nixon: Politician, President, Administrator (Greenwood Press, 1991), pp. 285–97.

  37. Hal Bruno, interview with author, February 25, 1994; Kleindienst, Justice p. 55; Peter Flanigan, interview with author, October 28, 1993 (no emotion); Nixon, RN, pp. 384–85.

  38. Nixon’s acceptance speech was reprinted in Richard M. Nixon, Six Crises (Pyramid, 1968), pp. v–xvi.

  39. Hubert H. Humphrey, The Education of a Public Man: My Life and Politics (Doubleday, 1976), p. 437.

  40. Nixon, RN, p. 395.

  41. A. James Reichley, “Elm Street’s New White House Power,” Fortune, December 1969; White (1969), The Making of the President, p. 363. Mitchell’s analysis proved correct: For every vote lured from Wallace, the Nixon campaign lost a vote to Humphrey; see Robert D. Behn, ed., The Ripon Society: The Lessons of Victory (Dial Press, 1969), pp. 139–40.

  42. Fred LaRue, interview with author, August 4, 2003; Morin, The Associated Press Story, p. 193.

  43. Witcover, The Resurrection, p. 366, and UMS 4570 ($34 million); Goldman, “Mr. Law-and-Order” (austerity); Chester, Hodgson, and Page, An American Melodrama, p. 612 (mechanical, hardware).

  44. Shadegg, Winning’s a Lot More Fun, p. 240; Morin, The Associated Press Story, pp. 194–95. When Senator Abraham Ribicoff (D-CT) criticized the Chicago police from the podium, host Mayor Richard J. Daley reportedly shouted at Ribicoff: “Fuck you, you Jew son of a bitch, you lousy mother-fucker, go home” see U.S. v. Dellinger, et al. (69 CR 180).

  45. Shadegg, Winning’s a Lot More Fun, p. 240; Morin, The Associated Press Story, pp. 194–95. Viorst, “‘The Justice Department’” Reichley, “Elm Street’s New White House Power.”

  46. Witcover, The Resurrection, p. 444; Morin, The Associated Press Story, pp. 194–95; Adelman, “You Do What Needs to Be Done.”

  47. Nguyen Cao Ky with Marvin J. Wolf, Buddha’s Child: My Fight to Save Vietnam (St. Martin’s, 2002), pp. 290–91.

  48. Anna Chennault, The Education of Anna (Times Books, 1980), passim; William Bundy, A Tangled Web: The Making of Foreign Policy in the Nixon Presidency (Hill and Wang, 1999), pp. 37, 549ff. Another account suggests Nixon introduced Chennault to John Mitchell in 1967; see Anthony Summers, The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon (Viking, 2000), p. 299. Finally, Bui Diem wrote the meeting took place not in Nixon’s apartment, but at his campaign headquarters; see Bui Diem with David Chanoff, In the Jaws of Victory (Houghton Mifflin, 1978), p. 237.

  49. It is unclear whether Chennault was wiretapped, followed, or both. J. Edgar Hoover’s definitive biography reported the FBI director nixed the idea, fearing disclosure “would put [the FBI] in a most untenable and embarrassing position” see Athan Theoharis and John Stuart Cox, The Boss: J. Edgar Hoover and the Great American Inquisition (Bantam, 1990), p. 453n. Deputy Director Cartha “Deke” DeLoach told the Senate Watergate committee, in previously unpublished testimony, that Chennault was placed under physical surveillance for “several days” see SSCEX, Cartha D. DeLoach, October 3, 1973. DeLoach later told the Church Committee the FBI wiretapped both the South Vietnamese embassy and Chennault’s telephone; see the committee’s Final Report, Book II, p. 228n. Still later, DeLoach said only the embassy was bugged, but in 1998, he renewed his claim that electronic surveillance was also placed on Chennault; see Bundy, A Tangled Web, p. 551n. Only one author has claimed Mitchell was tapped; see Aitken, Nixon, p. 365.

  50. Chennault, The Education of Anna, pp. 190–91; Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA (Pocket Books, 1981), p. 253.

  51. Nixon, RN, p. 411; White (1969), The Making of the President, p. 438.

  52. Nixon RN, p. 412 (irritated). Estimates of the vote margin in 1960 vary somewhat, with sources as disparate as the Associated Press, the Republican National Committee, Congressional Quarterly, and the Clerk of the House of Representatives releasing figures ranging from a low of 111,803 votes to a high of 119,450; see White, The Making of the President 1960, p. 422. Subsequent scholars supported the Nixon camp’s cries of foul play; see Nixon, p. 606 (“Charges of fraud in Texas and Illinois were too widespread, and too persistent, to be entirely without foundation”) and Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot, pp. 132–34.

  53. Garment, Crazy Rhythm, p. 142.

  54. Morin, The Associated Press Story, p. 196; Nixon, RN, pp. 412–13 (Chapin).

  55. Nixon RN, pp. 412–13; Strober and Strober, Nixon, p. 295 (tear).

  56. “People,” Time, April 15, 1974; Don Bertrand, “Two County Men May Be in Nixon Cabinet,” New York Daily News, November 17, 1968. The Washington Post reported Mitchell was a registered Independent before merging firms with Nixon; see Don Oberdorfer, “Justice,” Washington Post, December 12, 1968.

  57. Mitchell-Reed, interview, February 23, 1992.

  58. Jennings, interview, August 1, 2002.

  59. McLendon, Martha, pp. 69–75.

  60. Tom Ottenad, “Was Saigon’s Peace Talk Delay Due to Republican Promises?” Boston Globe, January 6, 1969, and Judith Viorst, “Anna Chennault: Washington’s Own Fortune Cookie,” Washingtonian, September 1969, both quoted in Summers, The Arrogance of Power, p. 519; Seymour M. Hersh, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House (Summit, 1983), p. 22 (concerned).

  61. WH memorandum from Peter M. Flanigan for John N. Mitchell, [no subject], October 2, 1969; FG 17 WHCF, DOJ, Box 1, NARA.

  62. HN, February 25, 1969 (underlining in original).

  63. HN, April 12, 1971 (high-level), May 18, 1971 (finesse).

  64. Summers, The Arrogance of Power, p. 306.

  65. Safire, Before the Fall, pp. 88–91; John Lehman, interview with author, March 3, 2001.

  66. E-mails from [a confidential source] to the author, January 21, 2003, 6:16 p.m.; and Wednesday, January 22, 2003, 3:25 p.m.

  67. Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, “Due to the Typical Mitchell Caution, Nixon Didn’t Embrace Labor Chiefs,” Washington Post, October 28, 1968 (golden opportunity); Evans and Novak, “Mitchellism,” New York Post, November 24, 1969; and Evans and Novak, Nixon in the White House, pp. 27, 56
(fatal).

  68. Richard Kleindienst, interview with author, April 21, 1992; Behn, The Ripon Society, pp. 139–52; Strober and Strober, Nixon, p. 54 (Chapin). Nixon benefited from a drop in voter turnout: Only 60 percent of eligible voters cast ballots, down from 69 percent in 1960 and 64 percent in 1964, with the decline “especially noticeable in the largest cities.”

  69. Bertrand, “Two County Men” (autonomy); CI, September 27, 1988 (debates); Viorst, “‘The Justice Department’” (lean, temper); “The Sharp New Line,” BusinessWeek.

  LAW AND ORDER

  1. Ruckelshaus interview.

  2. Nixon, RN, p. 420.

  3. Ehrlichman, Witness to Power, p. 57n; author’s transcript of Nixon-Frost interview (aired September 8, 1977).

  4. CI, August 9, 1988 (Disneyland); “Fighting Crime in America: Exclusive Interview with Attorney General John N. Mitchell,” U.S. News & World Report, August 18, 1969 (twenty-six); Schoenebaum, Profiles of an Era, p. 443 (fat). Appearing on The Dick Cavett Show in 1970, Mitchell said he was “not really surprised” when Nixon chose him to be attorney general. “I think the suggestion was made quite a number of times, about twenty-three, as I recall, and we were just in disagreement as to who should be the attorney general,” Mitchell said. “But it finally turned out that he wanted me, and so I’m there.” Herb Klein cut in: “I remember, as a matter of fact, John resisted that suggestion.” “Twenty-three times, I think it was, Herb,” Mitchell insisted; see Makay and Brown, The Rhetorical Dialogue, pp. 37–57.

  5. Garment interview, March 13, 1992 (emphases in original); Nixon-Frost interview; Morrison interview; Harries interview; McLendon, Martha, p. 75; Deborah Gore Dean, interview with author, March 10, 1992.

  6. Kleindienst, Justice, p. 61.

  7. “Attorney General: John Newton Mitchell,” New York Times, December 12, 1968 (pragmatic); Oberdorfer, “Justice” (take-charge).

  8. Denniston, “He’s No ‘Gang-Buster.’”

  9. Harris, Justice, p. 121.

  10. FBI statistics reprinted in Robert W. Peterson, ed., Crime and the American Response (Facts on File, 1973), pp. 6–12.

  11. Jerry Antevil and William Twaddell, “He’ll Wiretap to Fight Mob, Mitchell Tells Senators,” New York Daily News, January 15, 1969 (should be used, easy time); John P. McKenzie, “Mitchell Backed by Senate Panel,” Washington Post, January 15, 1969 (capacity, fine, isn’t likely, Ervin); Harris, Justice, pp. 122–24.

  12. Jack Hushen, interview with author, December 30, 1993.

  13. HN, March 10, 1970; April 15, 1970; July 15, 1970.

  14. Craig Smith, “Mitchell Vows to Fight Crime ‘On All Fronts,’” Staten Island Advance, January 22, 1969 (balding).

  15. Author’s transcript, NT, Nixon-Haldeman, Conversation No. 3–199, White House Telephone, May 13, 1971, 5:45 p.m. to 6:06 p.m., NARA (hell of a lot); letter from William Rehnquist to the author, June 29, 1993 (more than one) and William Rehnquist, interview with author, October 20, 1993.

  16. HN, January 23, 1969; The President’s News Conference of January 27, 1969. Except where noted, all quotations from the Public Papers of the Presidents are taken from John Woolley’s and Gerhard Peters’s exhaustive online database, The American Presidency Project, accessible at www.presidency.ucsb.edu.

  17. Except where noted, all citations of Nixon-Mitchell anticrime legislation are based on Congressional Quarterly Almanac, Vol. XXV, 1969 (Congressional Quarterly, 1970), pp. 687–722 and Congressional Quarterly Almanac, Vol. XXVI, 1970 (Congressional Quarterly, 1971), pp. 208–19, 545–51.

  18. Harris, Justice, p. 163; Sidney E. Zion, “Hard Line by the Administration,” New York Times, July 27, 1969.

  19. 60 Minutes, CBS News program, [aired] March 18, 1969; “Where War Against Crime Is Being Won: Interview with Attorney General John N. Mitchell,” U.S. News & World Report, March 22, 1971.

  20. “Remarks on Signing the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970,” October 15, 1970. The Senate voted to repeal the “no-knock” provision of the drug laws four years later; see CBS Evening News, July 12, 1974.

  21. Malcolm S. Forbes, “That’s Always the Way It Is for John Mitchell,” Forbes, October 1, 1971.

  22. UPI report, “Mitchell Reports Gain in Crime War,” New York Times, January 20, 1971.

  23. Forbes, “That’s Always the Way.”

  24. CBS Evening News, March 28, 1973. Although Mitchell advocated expanded wiretapping powers, the Nixon administration between January 1969 and March 1971 employed court-authorized electronic surveillance on only 309 occasions, 80 percent of them involving gambling or narcotics. These installations resulted in more than 900 arrests, more than 500 indictments, and more than 100 convictions. Even in national security cases, the administration placed 747 wiretaps, 115 fewer than Lyndon Johnson’s, and only 165 more than John F. Kennedy’s—an impressive fact given that Nixon’s presidency lasted more than two-and-a-half years longer than Kennedy’s. Moreover, the Nixon administration, according to figures released by President Ford’s attorney general, Edward Levi, made only 163 national security room-microphone installations, 29 fewer than Johnson’s administration, and 105 fewer than Kennedy’s; see David Wise, The American Police State: The Government Against the People (Random House, 1976), p. 145n.

  25. Forbes, “That’s Always the Way.”

  26. “Where War Against Crime Is Being Won,” U.S. News & World Report.

  27. “Attorney General Mitchell: The Tide Is Turning Against Crime,” Nation’s Business, June 1970 (hand).

  28. AOP, 128; Kleindienst, Justice, p. 64; Kleindienst interview.

  29. Erwin Griswold, interview with author, June 28, 1994.

  30. Baker, Conflicting Loyalties, p. 11.

  31. Author’s transcript, NT, Nixon-Haldeman, Conversation No. 534-12, Oval Office, July 1, 1971, 1:38 to 2:05 p.m., NARA (better off, repels); author’s transcript, NT, Nixon-Ehrlichman, Conversation 137-12, Camp David, August 13, 1972, 9:53 to 10:02 a.m. (didn’t want).

  DAYS OF RAGE

  1. DOJ transcript of Mitchell press conference in Indianapolis, Indiana, October 16, 1970; FBIM.

  2. Peter Fleming, interview with author, December 17, 1991 (raising hell); Morrison interview (bastards).

  3. HN, February 14 and 21, 1969; March 3, 1969 (emphases in original).

  4. Harris, Justice, pp. 172 (hard-line, evidence, component), 175 (forefront).

  5. Spencer Rich, “Mitchell Urges Crackdown on College Rioters,” Washington Post, May 2, 1969 (imprisonment, legitimate, there shall be); Marjorie Hunter, “Mitchell Opposed to New Laws on Student Unrest,” New York Times, May 21, 1969 (into the hands); Kirkpatrick Sale, SDS (Vintage, 1974), p. 541 (detention camp).

  6. With the severance of Seale’s case, the indicted men became known as the Chicago Seven.

  7. Harris, Justice, p. 63 (intense); Nancy Zaroulis and Gerald Sullivan, Who Spoke Up: American Protest Against the War in Vietnam, 1963–1975 (Doubleday, 1984), p. 249 (hound, malicious); Judy Clavir and John Spitzer, The Conspiracy Trial (Bobbs-Merrill, 1970), pp. 147–71 (fascist pig liar); “Indicted Chicago 8 Ask Mitchell to Quit Over Wiretapping,” New York Times, June 16, 1969. The Chicago Eight branded Mitchell’s argument “shocking, lawless.” In June 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court held it unconstitutional to wiretap domestic groups without a warrant; see U.S. v. U.S. District Court, 407 U.S. 297 (1972). Asked about this years later, Mitchell noted “the other circuit courts had sustained the power and we assumed the Supreme Court would…. But I wasn’t personally involved in it” see KI, February 9, 1988.

  8. Rennie Davis, interview with author, May 9, 2004; Jonah Raskin, For the Hell of It: The Life and Times of Abbie Hoffman (University of California Press, 1998), photo insert (boxing gloves). On the Chicago Seven–inspired riots at the Watergate—an incident whose obscurity is curious, given the severity of the clashes and the later prominence of the targeted building—see “1,000 March to Watergate in ‘7’ Protest,” Washington Evening Star, February 19, 1970; Lance Gay, “M
arch on Watergate Rebuffed,” Washington Evening Star, February 20, 1970; Carl Bernstein and Paul Valentine, “145 Arrested in March on Watergate,” Washington Post, February 20, 1970; Myra MacPherson, “Security ‘Wonderful’ for Watergate Area,” Washington Post, February 20, 1970; “Police Bar March on Mitchell Home,” New York Times, February 20, 1970; B. D. Colen, “Watergate Residents Happy,” Washington Evening Star, February 21, 1970; “Backers of ‘Chicago 7’ Obtain Rally Permits,” Washington Evening Star, February 21, 1970; Woody West, “Underground Newsman to Fight Charge,” Washington Evening Star, February 21, 1970; and Dana Beal and Steve Conliff, eds., Blacklisted News, Secret History: From Chicago ’68 to 1984 (Youth International Party Information Service, 1983), pp. 444–45. Riot officers may have been swifter to attack in this case because of Mitchell’s residency at the Watergate: “Reporters who had covered similar protests here,” observed the Washington Evening Star, “said that police seemed more impatient and rougher in handling the demonstrators yesterday than in the past.”

  9. “Fighting Crime in America,” U.S. News & World Report; Sale, SDS, pp. 543–44; Seymour M. Hersh, “Underground for the C.I.A. in New York: An Ex-Agent Tells of Spying on Students,” New York Times, December 29, 1974 (profiles).

  10. Beacon Hill Revolutionary Action Group, “The Knock at the Door,” [undated leaflet c. 1969], reprinted in Mitchell Goodman, The Movement Toward a New America (Alfred A. Knopf, 1970), p. 580 (culture); Raskin, For the Hell of It, p. 182 (darkened, menacing); CBS Evening News, May 4, 1971 (dictatorship); William Ayers, interview with author, May 8, 2004; Billy Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Jeff Jones, and Celia Sojourn, eds., Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism (Communications Co., 1974), pp. 23–30; Sale, SDS, pp. 544–45.

  11. CCT, 127–31. Apart from the FBI’s efforts to “penetrate and disrupt the Communist Party USA and white hate groups,” COINTELPRO operations were “apparently not reported to any of the attorneys general in office during the period in which they were implemented,” concluded Attorney General William B. Saxbe and FBI Director Clarence M. Kelley in November 1974; see Noam Chomsky in Nelson Blackstock, COINTEL PRO: The FBI’s Secret War on Political Freedom (Vintage, 1976), pp. 4, 212n 2. In 1975, at the hearings of the Senate’s Church Committee, which investigated domestic spying abuses, Mitchell told Senator Walter Mondale there were “areas in which the Bureau was not fully accountable to me” this led Senator Walter Huddleston to ask if COINTELPRO was among them. “From what I know about it,” Mitchell answered, “yes, sir.” Former FBI agent M. Wesley Swearingen stated in a 1980 deposition that although COINTELPRO “had been ‘officially’ discontinued [by Mitchell] in April 1971…agents continued to carry out the program’s objectives” see Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, The COINTEL PRO Papers: Documents From the FBI’s Secret Wars Against Domestic Dissent (South End Press, 1990), p. 334n 25. On the FBI’s surveillance of Mitchell, see Alexander Charns, Cloak and Gavel: FBI Wiretaps, Bugs, Informers, and the Supreme Court (University of Illinois Press, 1992), pp. 112, 184n 4. “No other information about this interception has been made public,” wrote Charns. “The FBI claims the ELSUR [electronic surveillance] log concerning John Mitchell is still classified.”