Martha Mitchell was a flamboyant Washington DC socialite whose husband was embroiled in the Watergate scandal. Her shocking claims of a violent abduction and a "dirty business" were ridiculed as delusional – until they turned out to be true.
Martha Mitchell was a character; everyone agreed on that. Born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas in 1918, she emerged as a flamboyant, charismatic Washington socialite after the appointment of her second husband, John Mitchell, to the Nixon White House.
She liked a drink, and sometimes liked to follow those drinks with gossipy late-night phone calls to reporters. Her outsized personality and presence earned her the nickname "Washington's Other Martha". Her candidness saw her nicknamed "the Mouth of the South".
Warning: This article contains language that some may find offensive.
But in 1972, as her husband was embroiled in the Watergate scandal and she became, in the words of the reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, "the Greek chorus of the […] drama, sounding her warnings to all who would hear", Martha's eccentricities were turned against her.
She was dismissed as a drunk, a fantasist and a self-publicist, even as the broad truth of her claims of a "dirty business" became clear.
Her more specific and lurid accusations – of a violent abduction by Nixon associates, of being held hostage and drugged – only enhanced her status as a seemingly unreliable witness. "The whole thing is incredible," she acknowledged to David Frost in a September...
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