Who was the attorney general during Watergate? John Newton Mitchell (September 15, 1913 – November 9, 1988) was the 67th Attorney General of the United States (1969–1972) under President Richard Nixon.
Aug 25, 2010 · Mr. Saxbe, a blunt-spoken Republican maverick from Ohio, was a Nixon appointee who as attorney general presided during the Watergate inquiry.
John Mitchell, in full John Newton Mitchell, (born Sept. 15, 1913, Detroit, Mich., U.S.—died Nov. 9, 1988, Washington, D.C.), U.S. attorney general during the Nixon administration who served 19 months in prison (1977–79) for his participation in the Watergate Scandal. Mitchell played semiprofessional hockey while working his way through Fordham University (New York City) …
Feb 04, 2000 · Richard G. Kleindienst, 76, who served as President Richard M. Nixon's attorney general during the first year of the Watergate investigation that …
Archibald CoxBornMay 17, 1912 Plainfield, New Jersey, U.S.DiedMay 29, 2004 (aged 92) Brooksville, Maine, U.S.Political partyDemocraticSpouse(s)Phyllis Ames ( m. 1937)18 more rows
U.S. President Richard Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox; Richardson refused and resigned effective immediately. Nixon then ordered Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox; Ruckelshaus refused, and also resigned.
Richard KleindienstPreceded byJohn MitchellSucceeded byElliot Richardson10th United States Deputy Attorney GeneralIn office January 20, 1969 – June 12, 197221 more rows
Deceased (1913–1988)John N. Mitchell / Living or Deceased
John N. MitchellIn office January 21, 1969 – March 1, 1972PresidentRichard NixonPreceded byRamsey ClarkSucceeded byRichard Kleindienst18 more rows
As U.S. Attorney General, he was a prominent figure in the Watergate Scandal, and resigned rather than obey President Nixon's order to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox.
Jeff SessionsOfficial portrait, 201784th United States Attorney GeneralIn office February 9, 2017 – November 7, 2018PresidentDonald Trump33 more rows
William BarrPresidentGeorge H. W. BushPreceded byDonald B. AyerSucceeded byGeorge J. Terwilliger IIIUnited States Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel30 more rows
Hon Suella Braverman QCThe Rt Hon Suella Braverman QC MP Suella Braverman was appointed Attorney General on 13 February 2020. She was previously Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Exiting the European Union from January to November 2018.
The Committee for the Re-election of the President (also known as the Committee to Re-elect the President), abbreviated CRP, but often mocked by the acronym CREEP, was, officially, a fundraising organization of United States President Richard Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign during the Watergate scandal.
Segretti was a lawyer who served as a prosecutor for the military and later as a civilian. ... Segretti is currently shown as an active member in good standing of the State Bar of California.
The metonym 'Watergate' came to encompass an array of clandestine and often illegal activities undertaken by members of the Nixon administration, including bugging the offices of political opponents and people of whom Nixon or his officials were suspicious; ordering investigations of activist groups and political ...
Jennings, however, spent a lot of time away from home, and (according to Mitchell) it led to the couple's separation on May 18, 1956 and eventual divorce on August 1, 1957. She once said as soon as she met John N. ... On January 10, 1961, the couple had a daughter, Martha Elizabeth, whom they nicknamed Marty.
Death. On New Year's Eve, 1999, Richardson died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Boston at the age of 79. Major media outlets, such as CNN, recognized him as the "Watergate martyr" for refusing an order from President Nixon to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox.
Deceased (1920–1999)Elliot Richardson / Living or Deceased
On October 10, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein reported that the FBI had determined that the Watergate break-in was part of a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage on behalf of the Nixon re-election committee.
Dean married Karla Ann Hennings on February 4, 1962; they had one child, John Wesley Dean IV, before divorcing in 1970. Dean married Maureen (Mo) Kane on October 13, 1972.
John N. MitchellIn office January 21, 1969 – March 1, 1972PresidentRichard NixonPreceded byRamsey ClarkSucceeded byRichard Kleindienst18 more rows
Richard KleindienstPreceded byJohn MitchellSucceeded byElliot Richardson10th United States Deputy Attorney GeneralIn office January 20, 1969 – June 12, 197221 more rows
Why did Nixon accept the resignation of U.S. Attorney General Elliot Richardson? Richardson refused to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox.
Terms in this set (42) The events and scandal surrounding a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in 1972 and the subsequent cover-up of White House involvement, leading to the eventual resignation of President Nixon under the threat of impeachment.
Mitchell quickly became a close political adviser to Nixon, and in 1968 he managed Nixon’s successful campaign for the presidency. Appointed attorney general, Mitchell took office in January 1969 and remained there until March 1972, when he resigned to head Nixon’s reelection committee.
John Mitchell, in full John Newton Mitchell, (born Sept. 15, 1913, Detroit, Mich., U.S.—died Nov. 9, 1988, Washington, D.C.), U.S. attorney general during the Nixon administration who served 19 months in prison (1977–79) for his participation in the Watergate Scandal.
John Mitchell and Richard Nixon's professional careers converged when, on New Year's Eve 1966, their law offices combined to become Nixon Mudge Rose Guthrie Alexander and Mitchell. Although their status as friends is debated, when Nixon was elected president in 1968, he appointed John Mitchell as his Attorney General.
Martha Mitchell brought to [the Nixon Administration] a welcome touch of zaniness and genuine good humor. Seizing on a rare good thing, the press tended to exploit her. What originally had been innocent japes became media events. During the Watergate furor, her abortive TV career proved to be another and finally pitiable example of the capacity of the media to exploit and consume the vulnerable.
Nixon was later to tell interviewer David Frost in 1977 that Martha was a distraction to John Mitchell, such that no one was minding the store, and "If it hadn't been for Martha Mitchell, there'd have been no Watergate.".
John worked as a lawyer in Manhattan, earning US$250,000 a year, and the couple purchased a home on the grounds of the Apawamis Club. On January 10, 1961, the couple had a daughter, Martha Elizabeth, whom they nicknamed Marty.
The following Thursday, on June 22, Mitchell made a late-night phone call to Helen Thomas of the United Press, reportedly Mitchell's favorite reporter. Mitchell informed Thomas of her intention to leave her husband until he resigned from the CRP. The phone call, however, abruptly ended. When Thomas called back, the hotel operator told her that Mitchell was "indisposed" and would not be able to talk. Thomas then called John, who seemed unconcerned and said, " [Martha] gets a little upset about politics, but she loves me and I love her and that’s what counts." In her subsequent report of the incident, Thomas said that it was apparent someone had taken the phone from Mitchell's hand and the woman could be heard saying "You just get away." Thomas's account was widely covered in the news, and many media outlets made efforts to find Mitchell for an interview. A few days later, Marcia Kramer, a veteran crime reporter of the New York Daily News, tracked Mitchell to the Westchester Country Club in Rye, New York. Kramer found "a beaten woman" who had "incredible" black and blue marks on her arms. In what turned out to be the first of many interviews, Mitchell related how in the week following the Watergate burglary, she had been held captive in that California hotel and that it was King that had pulled the phone cord from the wall. After several attempts to escape from the balcony, she was physically accosted by five men, which had left her needing stitches. Herb Kalmbach, Nixon's personal lawyer, was summoned to the hotel and he decided to call for a doctor to inject her with a tranquilizer. The incident left her fearing for her life.
A few days later, Marcia Kramer, a veteran crime reporter of the New York Daily News, tracked Mitchell to the Westchester Country Club in Rye, New York.
Martha Mitchell was portrayed in the 1995 film Nixon by actress Madeline Kahn who, like Mitchell, died at the age of 57 of cancer. In 2004, a three-act play, This is Martha Speaking..., by Thomas Doran premiered in Pine Bluff, Arkansas starring Lee Anne Moore as Martha Mitchell and Michael Childers as John Mitchell.
THE EARLIEST BREAK-IN. Watergate actually was the culmination of a chain of events that began months before the failed break-in at the Democratic Party offices. In March 1971, presidential assistant Charles Colson helped create a $250,000 fund for “intelligence gathering” of Democratic Party leaders.
Legal ethics and professionalism played almost no role in any lawyer’s mind, including mine. Watergate changed that—for me and every other lawyer.”. After Watergate, schools began to make legal ethics a required class. Bar examinations added an extra section on ethics.
Today, Krogh and Dean travel around the country speaking to bar associations, law firms and law schools about legal ethics. Each has been booked for about 20 programs in 2012.
By the summer of 1971, John Ehrlichman had authorized the creation of a special investigations unit, known simply as the Plumbers.
Heading up the Plumbers was Egil “Bud” Krogh Jr. , a deputy assistant to the president. Among his recruits were G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt, who organized the Watergate break-in while working for the Committee for the Re-election of the President, aka CREEP.
In 1977, the ABA created the Commission on Evaluation of Professional Standards, whose work led to the adoption of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct by the association’s policymaking House of Delegates in August 1983 .
John Mitchell was a trusted member of President Richard Nixon’s inner circle and in 1972 resigned as attorney general to become director of the Committee to Reelect the President. Officially abbreviated CRP, the committee later gained the dubious nickname “CREEP” as the Watergate scandal was heating up.
The story of the scandal began in June 1972, when five men were caught breaking into the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. We now know that these men were on the presidential payroll and that this event was actually their second time unlawfully entering the DNC office.
Today, psychologists still use the phrase “Martha Mitchell Effect” to refer to someone whose descriptions of real experiences are incorrectly labeled delusions. Though Nixon, John Mitchell, and the rest of the Watergate participants eventually got their comeuppance, it’s worth noting that Steve King is doing just fine.
Martha Mitchell, wife of Attorney General John Mitchell, was the first Watergate whistleblower — but she was silenced, discredited, and all but forgotten. Whistleblowing is a lonely road. Without knowing whether the public will deem them heroes or traitors — or even believe their claims at all — whistleblowers take an incredible risk ...
Nicknamed “the Mouth of the South,” Mitchell was a public figure, outspoken conservative, and legendary gossip in the late 1960s and into the 1970s. In Slow Burn, a podcast about Watergate, the episode dedicated ...
When the attorney general received a call informing him of the arrest of the burglars, he feared how his histrionic wife might react to the news, given that one of the men arrested, James McCord, had once served as her bodyguard.
Whistleblowing is a lonely road. Without knowing whether the public will deem them heroes or traitors — or even believe their claims at all — whistleblowers take an incredible risk with no certain payoff.
John Newton Mitchell (September 15, 1913 – November 9, 1988) was an American convicted criminal, lawyer, the 67th Attorney General of the United States under President Richard Nixon and chairman of Nixon's 1968 and 1972 presidential campaigns. Prior to that, he had been a municipal bond lawyer and one of Nixon's closest personal friends.
Mitchell was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Margaret (McMahon) and Joseph C. Mitchell. He grew up in the New York City borough of Queens. He earned his law degree from Fordham University School of Law and was admitted to the New York bar in 1938. He served for three years as a naval officer (Lieutenant, Junior Grade) during World War II where he was a PT boat commander.
Except for his period of military service, Mitchell practiced law in New York Cityfrom 1938 until 1…
Mitchell devised a type of revenue bond called a "moral obligation bond" while serving as bond counsel to New York's governor Nelson Rockefellerin the 1960s. In an effort to get around the voter approval process for increasing state and municipal borrower limits, Mitchell attached language to the offerings that was able to communicate the state's intent to meet the bond payments while not placing it under a legal obligation to do so. Mitchell did not dispute when as…
In 1967, the firm of Caldwell, Trimble & Mitchell, where Mitchell was lead partner, merged with Richard Nixon's firm, Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie, & Alexander. Nixon was then officially in "politically retirement" but was quietly organizing a return to politics in the 1968 Presidential Election. Mitchell, with his many contacts in local government, became an important strategic confident t…
In 1967, the firm of Caldwell, Trimble & Mitchell, where Mitchell was lead partner, merged with Richard Nixon's firm, Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie, & Alexander. Nixon was then officially in "politically retirement" but was quietly organizing a return to politics in the 1968 Presidential Election. Mitchell, with his many contacts in local government, became an important strategic confident t…
John Mitchell's name was mentioned in a deposition concerning Robert L. Vesco, an international financier who was a fugitive from a federal indictment. Mitchell and Nixon Finance Committee Chairman Maurice H. Stans were indicted in May 1973 on federal charges of obstructing an investigation of Vesco after he made a $200,000 contribution to the Nixon campaign. In April 1974, both men were a…
In the days immediately after the Watergate break-in of June 17, 1972, Mitchell enlisted former FBI agent Steve King to prevent his wife Martha from learning about the break-in or contacting reporters. While she was on a phone call with journalist Helen Thomasabout the break-in, King pulled the phone cord from the wall. Mrs. Mitchell was held against her will in a California hotel room and forci…
Around 5:00 pm on November 9, 1988, Mitchell collapsed from a heart attack on the sidewalk in front of 2812 N Street NW in the Georgetown area of Washington, D.C., and died that evening at George Washington University Hospital. He was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery, based on his World War II Naval service and his cabinet post of Attorney General.
• John Randolph had an uncredited role in the 1976 film All the President's Men as the voice of John Mitchell.
• He was portrayed by E. G. Marshall in Oliver Stone's 1995 film Nixon.
• He was portrayed by John Doman in the 2020 film The Trial of the Chicago 7.