This short Netflix documentary opened my eyes to the part that Martha Mitchell may have played in the downfall of Tricky Dick himself, U. S. President Richard Nixon. She was the wife of Nixon's Attorney General and later his 1972 re-election campaign manager, John Mitchell, considered to be the man who organised the Watergate break-in. For long enough she supported Nixon, but once she made public her distaste for the Vietnam War, she was seen thereafter by the White House as a loose cannon and a potential liability to the re-election campaign.
Once Watergate hit the headlines, she sought to deflect her husband's role in the plot by saying that the buck went all the way to the top, meaning the President himself. Sadly, after Nixon's resignation, her husband left her and is actually caught on camera after receiving his prison sentence, uttering words to the effect that he still preferred that prospect over spending any more time with his then estranged wife.
Lionised in her lifetime in the press, on TV and to the American public at large as a truth-teller until Nixon's dirty-tricks saw her discredited and branded as an alcoholic mental case, she later tried to relaunch herself as a talk-show host on TV before she was sadly stricken down with what proved to be a terminal illness and died aged only 57 in 1976.
We see Nixon in one of his famous interviews with David Frost (he also interviewed Martha, but we get only a tiny glimpse of that, unfortunately) say on record 'If it hadn't been for Martha Mitchell, there'd have been no Watergate." and this after she'd died.
To attract two such quotes from both these high-profile crooks John Mitchell and of course Nixon certainly leads one to believe the floral tribute at her funeral which bore the legend "Martha was right!".
I appreciated learning about her story, even if I don't share her politics. The problem with this documentary was it was just too short and seemed to treat every major event, once she found her voice, like they were bullet points.
It's like suddenly her husband has separated from her, then she's on TV doing chat shows, then she's dying and then she's dead. She may just have been a footnote in the downfall of a disgraced president, but he certainly was well aware of her and I think the film-maker here did her a disservice in not expanding on her story more than is done here.
That said, at least her story is out there and I for one am glad I caught this flawed but interesting documentary profile of this very interesting lady.
