Now Streaming: The Martha Mitchell Effect

Martha Mitchell came to Washington in 1968 with her husband John Mitchell, who’d served as Nixon’s campaign chairman before becoming Attorney General. But as filmmakers Anne Alvergue and Debra McClutchy make clear in their excellent 2022 archival doc, The Martha Mitchell Effect, now streaming on Netflix, the role of political wife and Washington hostess never suited her.

“Martha Mitchell wasn't playing the Washington game,” says former Washington Post journalist Sally Quinn in the film. “She was not going to be just the wife who sits in the background and not say anything.”

Brash and outspoken, she became something of a Washington celebrity and media darling, qualities Nixon and his inner circle initially thought they could use to their advantage. And while Mitchell herself was all in for Nixon, campaigning non-stop for his reelection in 1974, it all began to unravel after news of the Watergate break-in became public, straining relations between Martha, her husband and the White House. To distract attention from the growing scandal, Nixon and his top advisers, including, as it turns out, John Mitchell, orchestrated a smear campaign against Martha, setting off a chain of public recriminations that eventually led to Martha accusing Nixon of being at the center of the break-in and cover-up.

As Bob Woodward says in the film, “she smelled it. She knew something dirty was going on. Carl Bernstein and I started to realize that she was a Greek chorus of one, because she was telling the truth.” Even Nixon would eventually concede that Martha was a pivotal figure in his downfall. As he told David Frost in 1976, “I'm convinced if it hadn't been for Martha there would've been no Watergate.”