The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate
Contents:
It may seem strange to say that Rosen aims to vindicate the lawman-turned-convict, since the author affirms Mitchell's guilt and even details crimes "he got away with," but Rosen's purpose is wholesale revision: He presses the thesis that Mitchell should be recognized as a distinguished, if tragic, American figure. To the author, Mitchell was a victim repeatedly wronged -- by a petty cabal of men in the White House who schemed to make him the fall guy for Watergate; by a conspiracy among the press, politicians and prosecutors, for whom Rosen reserves his harshest words because, in his view, they shared a baseless ardor to put Mitchell away; and, most of all, by the two people at the center of his life, the grandiose, self-pitying Nixon and Mitchell's unhinged, headline-grabbing second wife, Martha.
The Strong Man is the first full-scale biography of John N. Mitchell, the central figure in the rise and ruin of Richard Nixon and the highest-ranking American. THE STRONG MAN. John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate. By James Rosen. Doubleday. pp. $ John Mitchell was Richard Nixon's.
Rosen doesn't really explain her hold on Mitchell, but he recounts how she used her weird celebrity to intrude repeatedly on matters of state. Billed as a biography, The Strong Man reads more like a polemic.
Rosen elevates Mitchell's standing at the bar his bond practice, this book unpersuasively insists, put him "among the nation's most elite lawyers". The author exaggerates the good that Mitchell did as attorney general "to ensure racial progress he did more than any executive branch official of the twentieth century," Rosen claims -- overlooking, among others, Burke Marshall, the Kennedy-Johnson civil rights chief who led the effort to pass the Civil Rights Act.
Rosen does this to boost the credibility of his restoration project, but his hype accomplishes the opposite. About Watergate, however, Rosen tells a relentless, intricate, sometimes engrossing tale. John Dean comes across as a duplicitous manipulator, Jeb Magruder as a spineless liar, Gordon Liddy as a maniacal soldier of misfortune. It was their Gemstone plan for intelligence operations against the Democrats in , Rosen relates, that led to the Watergate break-in for which Mitchell was held responsible. Three times, in Rosen's narrative, they wouldn't take "no" for an answer when they vainly sought the approval of "the strong man.
Mitchell's most famous utterance was about The Washington Post's late, great publisher.
The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate
When he was called by Carl Bernstein in September for comment the night before the newspaper ran a story alleging that he controlled an illegal slush fund used to spy on Nixon's political opponents, Mitchell snapped: Open Preview See a Problem? Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page.
John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate 4. The Strong Man is the first full-scale biography of John N. Mitchell, the central figure in the rise and ruin of Richard Nixon and the highest-ranking American official ever convicted on criminal charges.
The path led, ultimately, to a prison cell in Montgomery, Alabama, where Mitchell was welcomed into federal custody by the same men he had appointed to office. Based on original interviews and hundreds of thousands of previously unpublished documents and tapes, The Strong Man resolves definitively the central mysteries of the Nixon era: A landmark of history and biography, The Strong Man is that rarest of books: Hardcover , pages.
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Sometimes you have to wait a lifetime to find out what a person is truly like. One hundred pages of footnotes including over interviews he personally conducted in a page book denote the vast and varied sources that Rosen, who started his research as a prodigious 21 year old fresh out of Johns Hopkins University, painstakingly assembled. The result is nothing less than extraordinary. Along the way Sometimes you have to wait a lifetime to find out what a person is truly like.
Along the way, we see a lot of the "usual suspects" - President Nixon acting in his typical neurotic fashion; a fauning and sycophantic Henry Kissinger, and the hard-nosed Nixon gatekeepers John Ehrlichman and H. In cases like the Kent State shootings, the "Pentagon Papers" affair and the instance of military espionage against the administration - which as Rosen describes extended into the higher-echelons of the admiralty of the U.
Navy, we see numerous and previously unpublished meeting notes - mostly by Haldeman - that describe the urgency of these monumental events in U. But what's notable in this volume is the description of Mitchell, who Rosen reveals to be a more thoughtful, politically astute, and loyal person than others may have previously known.
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One telling situation was where Mitchell was seeking to extend the Voting Rights Act of , which was coming up for renewal in Mitchell was actually interested in renewing and extending it throughout all the states, and not just those in the deep and historically segregated South. And while Nixon was shown by the White House tapes to be repeatedly anti-Semitic in his comments particularly in references to the NY Times and the "Pentagon Papers" matter, Mitchell does not volley back similar epithets. Additionally, Mitchell was shown to be outwardly steady in dealing with his wife Martha, who is shown to be a one-woman wrecking crew - a mentally unbalanced alcoholic who spent many late evenings making incoherent, alcohol-infused calls to newspaper journalists who were more than eager to print her comments in the next day's edition.
In fact, her lime-green princess telephone, strategically located on the wall near her bathtub, attains a symbollic and surreal if not iconic status in Rosen's mind. But Rosen believes there is no question Mitchell was adversely affected in his AG role because of this not to mention her profligate spending habits.
Next, Rosen tackles John Dean and his role in the Watergate affair. Rosen's research draws the conclusion that Dean was much more involved in the break-in and the subsequent coverup than earlier thought. In fact Rosen believes Dean ordered the break-in. The evidence for this, of course, is circumstancial, but in my own opinion, highly plausible. Gordon Liddy's unveiling of the "Gemstone" plan, to the "Plumbers" unit, Mitchell is shown to be largely out of the loop; in fact, his lieutenants, Maurice Stans, Jeb Stuart Magruder and Fred LaRue, were given wide latitude in tasks such appropriating money, and making decisions regarding strategies for the election of , and peripheral events -- including dealing with the Watergate burglars.
And John Dean was the thread that connected all of them. In his testimony before the Senate Committee on Watergate, Mitchell crosses swords with North Carolina Senator Sam Ervin who Rosen rightly describes as a hypocritical, alcoholic segregationist , and lead Senate counsel Sam Dash who Rosen systematically demonstrates to be both impulsive and vindictive. About this time, President Nixon is shown by the tapes to have consistently have been calling for Mitchell "falling on his sword" and leaving - as if this would cause the Watergate clouds to separate and bring back the sun.
In his post-Nixonian life, Mitchell is shown to have struggled to make a living, and to provide for his two ex-wives Martha had since served him with divorce papers and daughter Marty.
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He was disbarred, so he had to resort to a "consultant" role in Washington. He also had signed with Simon and Schuster for a book which presumably would center around Watergate and former wife Martha ; but later backed out - whereupon, in , he was sued for the return of his advance, which he never managed to pay back. In summary, Rosen paints a largely sympathetic portrait of Mitchell, and uses sources that became available as late as to back his claims.
'The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate'
It is a powerful story, and Rosen's efforts to set the record straight are direct and pointed. Mitchell grew up on Long Island, NY. He played semi-pro hockey to pay his way through Fordham University and its law school. He joined the municipal bond law firm of Caldwell and Raymond in ; by he was a partner. Navy and was discharged in November with the rank of lieutenant. Contrary to popular myth, he was not Ensign John F.
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Mitchell was recognized as one of the most brilliant municipal bond attorneys. One year after he passed the bar exam he helped draft the Federal Housing Act of Nelson Rockefeller, who came up with the idea that permitted the governor to get around voter disapproval of his numerous bond schemes. In at the height of his legal career, Mitchell met the man who was to guarantee his place in U.
Criticized in for trying to be candidate and campaign manager at one at and the same time, Nixon decided he needed Mitchell, a strong, no nonsense can-do guy, to run his presidential campaign.