Everyone knows 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 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.
