Most people know the story of the Watergate scandal: the botched break-in at the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters 50 years ago this June, the White House cover-up and President Richard Nixon’s resignation. But who remembers the scandal’s most extraordinary subplot – the kidnapping and public trashing of Martha Mitchell, the feisty and outspoken wife of Nixon’s attorney-general, by White House henchmen intent on silencing her?
Martha sensed very early that Nixon and his aides were engaged in “dirty tricks” to secure the president’s re-election in 1972. She sought to alert journalists to what would become the 20th century’s greatest political scandal. Had she been taken seriously, the cover-up might never have happened and Nixon might have survived. But she was not.
The media swallowed the White House line that she was mentally unstable and an alcoholic. Her marriage broke up. Her life unravelled. Within four years, she had died of cancer – alone and impoverished at just 57.
Martha soon became a forgotten victim of the Watergate scandal, and of the misogyny of that era. But not any longer. The tragic story of Watergate’s first whistle-blower, the forerunner of the much better-known “Deep Throat”, is about to be resurrected in , a TV series that retells the scandal using her as the central character. Martha is played by Julia Roberts, her husband John by Sean Penn. It has taken half a century, but this flawed but brave and honest woman can finally,
