There are many stories of public figures who had downfalls, and the infamous Martha Mitchell was no exception.
You may have learned about her life in school while studying the Watergate scandal, or perhaps you’ve caught an episode of the recent limited series Gaslit where Julia Roberts portrays Martha.
If you don’t know much about Martha Mitchell, the woman whose world was turned upside down after Watergate, here is a rundown of her story.
Martha Mitchell was the wife of John Mitchell, who was President Richard Nixon’s attorney general in the early 1970s. John eventually stepped down from attorney general to run Nixon’s 1972 re-election campaign, the Committee for the Re-election of the President (CRP).
Although she had no official political authority, Martha was one of the most popular figures in American politics during that time. Martha was outspoken and charming and loved expressing her honest opinions in a good interview. She had the hottest political gossip in Washington, D.C., and she made sure everyone knew that.
Martha had a reputation for sitting around with an evening cocktail and calling up various reporters to let them in on some juicy political secrets.
However, Martha’s love of talk and gossip suddenly led to her downfall after the famous Watergate break-in.
The night news of the burglary at Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate building in Washington, D.C broke, Martha and John were attending a Republican fundraising event.
The CRP security director, James McCord, was one of the five men arrested in the Watergate burglary. Martha and John personally knew James McCord because when John stepped down as attorney general and lost protection from the Secret Service, he hired John to be Martha’s bodyguard.
Fear arose when John realized that if Martha had found out about James’ involvement in the Watergate burglary, she would put two and two together and figure out that her husband and the CRP were involved in the break-in. John feared if Martha knew all of this, she would tell the world.
So what did John decide to do? He chose to gaslight her in whichever way he could.
Immediately after the break-in, John left for Washington, D.C., to deal with the press. He left Martha alone in a hotel room with a group of men, one of them being an ex-FBI agent named Steve King. He had her supervised, so she couldn’t call anyone or read any newspapers to see what was going on with Watergate.
Martha finally got her hands on a newspaper and was stunned when she read about James McCord’s involvement in the break-in.
She immediately grabbed a phone to call her favorite reporter, Helen Thomas of the United Press International, and tell her something fishy was happening.
Then, Steve King ripped the telephone off the wall, and Martha realized she was being held captive. Steve King and the men hired by John sedated and tranquilized Martha for days to keep her in the hotel and prevent her from talking to anyone.
When Martha was finally let go, she flew to New York and began telling the press what had happened to her.
However, she wasn’t taken seriously, as people from the Nixon administration started spreading rumors that she was a mentally unstable alcoholic.
Despite everything that happened, Martha still defended John when the truth about CRP’s involvement in Watergate came out.
She and John separated in 1973, and he was convicted of perjury, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy in 1975. He spent 19 months in prison.
Martha was still often dismissed and discredited during her later years. She passed away from cancer in 1976 at 57.
Now, people have finally realized that what Martha went through was terrible, and she should’ve received more empathy.
Martha even has a psychological term named after her called the Martha Mitchell effect, which Oxford Reference defines as “a misinterpretation of a person’s justified belief as a delusion.”
Did you ever learn about Martha Mitchell in school?
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