Martha Mitchell: Wife of John Mitchell

The following is a left-ist website. Nonetheless, I still have questions from the Watergate Era. I remember my mom, my very non-violent, non-hateful mom, despising Martha Mitchell. I recall her referring to Martha Mitchell as a loose-lipped drunk.

Why Was Martha Mitchell Kidnapped?

(part I)
by Mae Brussell, from The Realist August 1972

Martha Mitchell made her Washington debut with sarcasm about war protestors who reminded her of "Russian revolutionaries." Three years later Martha wishes those same youths would come to her aid. When president Nixon held a press conference a few days after Ms. Mitchell was taken prisoner she complained that "nobody asked about me."

The youth of America had tried to tell people like Martha Mitchell that the president does not listen to any voices except a few. Why would he care to hear Martha's problems?

There was a smug complacency about the John Mitchell family in the days when he was promising this country that it was "going so far to the right we won't recognize it." Those were the carefree days when John and Martha were not caught in the bending process.

But did John Mitchell, one of the dirtiest, meanest men in political history, expose his "little sweetheart" to espionage agents doing some kinds of dirty work and distasteful acts? At what point did Martha have to be removed, silenced, and totally discredited?

Four days after the arrests at the Watergate Hotel, Martha Mitchell called a UPI reporter from Newport, California:

"I am sick and tired of politics."

"I gave (John) an ultimatum I would leave him if he didn't get out."

"I am a political prisoner."

"Politics is nothing but a cops and robbers game."

"I know dirty things."

"I saw dirty things."

"I am not going to stand for all those dirty tricks that go on."

"I am sick and tired of the whole operation."

"They threw me down on the bed, five men, and stuck a needle in my behind. A doctor stitched my fingers after the battle with five guards." (She had bruises on her arms and thighs.)

So. It had to have come from close if not "within the Whitehouse"?

Who is Mae? (a wee snip):

In addition to Mae's close friends and weekly listeners, she corresponded and networked with such people as Jim Garrison, Col. L. Fletcher Prouty, and Larry Flynt. Her first published article in Paul Krassner's The Realist was actually financed by John Lennon. And Frank Zappa once gave her a computer for filing and cross-indexing her research (but she never used it).
There were times when death threats drove Mae off the air: once by Charles Manson family member Sandra Good in September 1975. Sometimes Mae resorted to recording her shows at home on her small cassette tape recorder and privately mailed out copies to her subscribers.
Many of the articles Mae wrote tackled subjects that to this day remain unparalleled by anyone in the United States. The epitome of Mae's journalism "The Nazi Connection to the John F. Kennedy Assassination" appeared in Larry Flynt's premier issue of The Rebel magazine in November 1983.