(10 of 10)
Mitchell's fall from grace has been abrupt and painful. Always outwardly serene but reflecting an inner toughness, he seemed oblivious to any kind of criticism. He brushed aside complaints by civil libertarians that many of his measures—including the mass May Day arrests of antiwar protesters in Washington in 1971—were part of a trend toward repression by the Government. Mitchell accurately enough accused the protesters of "bullying people, shouting down those who disagreed with them," but he also venomously compared them with "Hitler's Brownshirts." He seemed unflustered when the U.S. Supreme Court last June declared some of his wiretapping orders unconstitutional.
Last week Mitchell was shaken by the indictments and looked years older than a few weeks ago. His voice trembled as he protested the grand jury's decision: "I can't imagine a more irresponsible action." Ironically, an often-cited Mitchell statement can only haunt him now. Defending the Nixon Administration, he told civil rights activists in 1969: "Watch what we do instead of listening to what we say."
Whether Nixon feels he has been betrayed by Mitchell in the Watergate affair or whether the two men confided fully in each other about the scandal all along is still their secret. In demanding that everyone who has any complicity in Watergate be prosecuted fully, Nixon may well be hastening the day when Mitchell faces another legal ordeal. As for so many in this disheartening affair, the personal agony for both men is acute.
Richard Nixon pledged that his nominee as Attorney General, Elliot Richardson, and the special prosecutor Richardson has promised to appoint, will make sure that the guilty are punished. "They will get to the bottom of this thing," Nixon vowed. Yet in another sense, prosecutors and the courts got to the bottom of Watergate last January when seven insignificant men were convicted. A more momentous and agonizing question remains: Will anyone now get to the top of it?
*The only other former Cabinet members ever indicted for a crime were Secretary of Interior Albert B. Fall and Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty, both because of Teapot Dome.