The Nation: The Misfortunes of Martha

"I've got one tongue and it works pretty well."

ONLY three days after Martha Mitchell delivered those brave, perhaps defiant words during a Watergate deposition hearing, her tongue was stilled. Unable to sleep, distraught and unhappy, she put herself under doctors' care and voluntarily entered a medical institution last week for treatment of a nervous breakdown.

Martha, the unrepressed Southern belle, once took great pride in the fact that John Mitchell—her second husband, whom she married in 1957—was one of Nixon's closest advisers. Martha delighted in sounding off against anyone to the left of...

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