Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Martha Mitchell Was Right

Episode Date: December 2, 2020

Have you ever thought something and everyone else said you were crazy? Have you ever been called crazy and then have the thing you were called crazy for turn out to be absolutely true? This not only happened to one woman, but she was institutionalized, had a psychological condition named after her, and had a hand in bringing down a United States president. Learn more about Martha Mitchell on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Have you ever thought something and have everyone say that you were crazy? Have you ever been called crazy? And then have the thing you were called crazy for turn out to be absolutely true? This not only happened to one woman, but she was discredited in the media, had a psychological condition named after her, and had a hand in bringing down a president of the United States. Learn more about Martha Mitchell on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Fear is the virus is trending on TikTok.

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To sign up for his free Speak in a Week email course, just go to Fluentin3 Months.com or click on the link in the show notes. Martha Elizabeth Beale was born in 1918 in the town of Pine Bluff, Arkansas. She was an only child who grew up in a rural area, and by all accounts had a normal upbringing. She liked to sing and wanted to become an opera singer, and also studied piano. She attended college hoping to become a nurse, but ended up transferring colleges twice before winding up at the University

of Miami with a degree in history. She took on a teaching position in Mobile, Alabama, which she hated, and then got a job as a secretary back home in Pine Bluff at the Pine Bluff Arsenal, a military facility that made bombs and grenades. Her boss was a brigadier general. In 1945, he was transferred to Washington, D.C., and decided to bring his trusted assistant Martha with him. In Washington, she met a man named Clyde Jennings, who was an army officer, and they soon got married. The couple moved to New York after he was discharged from the army where he became a traveling salesman. After being apart from each other for so long, in 1956, the marriage fell apart. However, soon after, she met a successful New York attorney by the name

of John Mitchell. And this is where the story starts to get interesting. John was one of the top municipal bond attorneys in the United States and worked on Wall Street, bringing in a quarter million a year salary in the late 1950s. That's a lot of money today, but it was really a lot of money back then. In 1966, John Mitchell's law firm merged with another law firm, and he became a new founding partner. That new law firm's name was Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie, Alexander, and Mitchell. The Nixon in that name was the one and only, Richard Nixon, the former vice president of the United States. Mitchell was actually a Kennedy Democrat until he met Nixon, who converted him into being a Republican, and they became fast friends. When Nixon announced himself as a candidate for

president in 1967, he tapped John Mitchell as his campaign manager. When Nixon won the presidency, he picked John Mitchell to become the Attorney General, the highest-ranking law enforcement officer in the country. Martha and John moved to Washington, D.C., and got an expensive apartment in the brand-new, posh, Watergate Complex. Living in Washington and married to one of the highest-ranking men in the government, Martha became very well-known. She appeared on news talk shows and would often be positioned as the attack dog for the Nixon administration. She was willing to say things about war protesters and other Republican Party talking points

that the administration couldn't say out loud. In 1970, she was one of the most recognizable women in America. She appeared in the variety show Laugh-in and was on the cover of Time and Life magazines. She earned the nickname Martha the mouth, and at first, Nixon loved her. Over time, however, Martha became disillusioned with the administration. Nixon wasn't scaling down the war in Vietnam.

He didn't appoint a woman to the Supreme Court like he said he would, and she noticed that the administration was far too interested in punishing enemies than doing things for the country. On an Air Force One flight, Martha went back to the press section to play cards with some of the reporters and began talking negatively about the war, which angered the president and those around him. Martha kept talking, expressing herself, and internally, they spoke of, quote, the Martha problem. In 1972, Nixon appointed John Mitchell to head the committee to

re-elect the president or the CRP or, as some called it, creep. In June of 1972, the couple was in California for campaign fundraising events when news broke of a break-in at the Democratic Party offices in the Watergate complex back in Washington. John Mitchell issued a statement to the press that the CRP had nothing to do with this. However, one of the men who was arrested in the break-in was James McCord, who Martha knew was the head of security for the CRP and was also assigned to be her daughter's body guard and driver. She knew something was up. She called her husband and asked why McCord was being thrown under a bus. She said she wanted John to leave politics and go back to law. It was at that point

he stopped taking calls from her. On June 22nd, she called Fred Leroux, who also worked for the CRP, and told him to tell her husband that he had to leave politics immediately and that she was going to take it to the press. Martha then called Washington reporter Helen Thomas with United Press, and told her that she was going to leave her husband unless he left the CRP. In the middle of the call, Thomas heard the words, quote, you just get away, unquote, and then the line went dead. She tried to call her back, but couldn't get a hold of her. She ran the story, and over the next few days, no one could find Martha Mitchell. Several days later, she was found at the Westchester Country Club in New York with black and blue marks all over her arms. She told her story that a

former FBI agent by the name of Steve King had ripped the phone cord out of the wall while she was talking. He tried to hold her down in the bed, but she ran to another room where he again pulled the phone out of the wall. He grabbed her and threw her into her bedroom and locked the door. When she tried to escape over the balcony, he ran in, threw her to the ground, and started kicking her. Eventually, a doctor was brought in, and she was injected with a tranquilizer. Despite Watergate being the biggest news story in the planet, Martha's account of what happened to her was relegated to the women's section of most newspapers. After speaking out against the president and telling her story,

the administration began a campaign of discrediting her. They told the media that she had a drinking problem and that she had a nervous breakdown. Terms such as unhinged and mentally unfit were thrown about. No one in the media took her or her story seriously. The discrediting campaign was largely successful. Eventually, Nixon was re-elected and the Watergate story was exposed, but it would have come to the nation's attention much earlier if people had listened to Martha Mitchell.

John Mitchell eventually was divorced from Martha, and in 1974 he was sentenced to prison. He remains the highest-ranking government official ever to spend time in prison. James McCord, one of the Watergate burglars, admitted in 1975 that Martha's story was true. Richard Nixon, of course, resigned. In a 1977 interview with David Frost, he said, If it hadn't been for Martha Mitchell, there would have been no water. Gate. Steve King, the man who hit and kicked Martha, was named a U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republican 2017. Clinical psychologists have dubbed the Martha Mitchell effect when a clinician

diagnoses someone as delusional when, in fact, they're telling the truth. Martha herself developed cancer and passed away in 1976 at the age of 57. At her funeral, an anonymous mourner sent a floral arrangement of white chrysanthemums that spelled out three words. Martha was right. Executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is James Mackala. The associate producer is Thor Thompson. Remember to leave a five-star review to get your review read on the show. They can be left at Apple Podcasts, Podcasts, Podcast Republic, or wherever you listen to the show. Also, you can help support the show over at patreon.com. Patrons can get merchandise like t-shirts and hoodies, as well as having direct access to provide suggestions for future episodes.