The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate (53 page)

COURTESY NIXON PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM

John Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman aboard Air Force One on April 27, 1973, three days before Watergate forced both men out of the White House. “I have always found Bob Haldeman to be an honest, straight-forward individual,” Mitchell said in 1988; Ehrlichman he considered “a conniving little S.O.B.”

COURTESY NIXON PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM

White House aides applaud the president in the Roosevelt Room on Election Day, 1972. From left, Nixon, press secretary Ron Ziegler, Haldeman, Kissinger, Rose Mary Woods, Herb Stein, John Dean, Harry Dent, Arthur Flemming, Charles Colson, William Safire (partially obscured), and Peter Flanigan.

COURTESY NIXON PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM

Nixon visits the headquarters of the Committee for the Re-Election of the President at 1701 Pennsylvania Avenue on September 18, 1972. From left, Clark MacGregor, Fred LaRue (with pipe), Jon Foust, Paul Wagner, Robert Marik, Nixon, and Jeb Magruder. This is the first published photograph showing Nixon with either LaRue or Magruder, who recently had gotten “roaring drunk” together to celebrate the confinement of the original Watergate indictments to the five arrested burglars, G. Gordon Liddy, and E. Howard Hunt.

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WASHINGTON POST
; REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF THE DC PUBLIC LIBRARY

Surrounded by reporters and photographers, and trailed by his attorney, Plato Cacheris, Mitchell is led into the Senate Watergate hearings on July 10, 1973, by the same uniformed policemen who once cheered his law-and-order gospel. Such chaotic scenes, at courthouses and federal prison, grew more common for Mitchell as he became, like Sherman McCoy in
The Bonfire of the Vanities
, a “professional defendant.”

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WASHINGTON POST
; REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF THE DC PUBLIC LIBRARY

Attorney William Hundley leans in as Mitchell, who was rarely photographed in his eyeglasses, prepares his testimony that day. CBS News correspondent Lesley Stahl and UPI reporter Helen Thomas hover nearby.

COURTESY HARRY BENSON

Suite 555 at the Essex House on Central Park South roars with Scotch and song on the evening of April 28, 1974, as Mitchell celebrates his acquittal in the so-called Vesco trial. From left are Mitchell defense attorney John Sprizzo; the former attorney general; Walter Bonner, an attorney for Maurice Stans; and an unidentified reveler.

COLLECTION OF AUTHOR

Ex-president Nixon welcomes Mitchell and his daughter Marty, then eighteen, to San Clemente for a party on September 2, 1979, thrown in honor of Mitchell’s release from prison. With guests assembled poolside, Nixon praised Mitchell for his “character, loyalty, and guts.”

COURTESY DEBORAH GORE DEAN

Mitchell watches as his companion Mary Gore Dean opens Christmas gifts at Marwood, the Gore family estate in Maryland, in December 1985. “You just dream after you have lost your husband, as I did,” Mrs. Dean told the author, “that someone this wonderful could come into your life.”

COURTESY DEBORAH GORE DEAN

Mary’s daughter Deborah Gore Dean, who referred to Mitchell as “Daddy,” attends a function with him, circa 1985. In Deborah Dean’s federal indictment in the HUD scandal, Mitchell would be listed, posthumously, as unindicted co-conspirator number one; the special counsel in the case publicly blamed Mitchell for having denied him a seat on the Supreme Court.

COURTESY DEBORAH GORE DEAN

Attorney General William French Smith welcomes Mitchell back to the Department of Justice for the unveiling of his official portrait, by artist Gloria Schumann, on January 7, 1985. Rose Woods was among the two dozen people on hand for the private ceremony.

COURTESY JILL MITCHELL-REED

From left, Richard A. Moore, Nixon, Mitchell, and Vice President George H. W. Bush at a party, circa 1986. Nixon’s inscription, dated February 14, 1987, reads: “To John Mitchell, who helped all three of us in our political careers. From Dick Nixon.”