The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate

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The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate

4.11 of 5 stars 4.11 · rating details · 27 ratings · 12 reviews

The Strong Man is the first full-scale biography of John N. Mitchell, the central figure in the rise and ruin of Richard Nixon and the highest-ranking American official ever convicted on criminal charges.

As U.S. attorney general from 1969 to 1972, John Mitchell stood at the center of the upheavals of the late sixties. The most powerful man in the Nixon cabinet, a confident...more The Strong Man is the first full-scale biography of John N. Mitchell, the central figure in the rise and ruin of Richard Nixon and the highest-ranking American official ever convicted on criminal charges.

As U.S. attorney general from 1969 to 1972, John Mitchell stood at the center of the upheavals of the late sixties. The most powerful man in the Nixon cabinet, a confident troubleshooter, Mitchell championed law and order against the bomb-throwers of the antiwar movement, desegregated the South’s public schools, restored calm after the killings at Kent State, and steered the commander-in-chief through the Pentagon Papers and Joint Chiefs spying crises. After leaving office, Mitchell survived the ITT and Vesco scandals—but was ultimately destroyed by Watergate.

With a novelist’s skill, James Rosen traces Mitchell’s early life and career from his Long Island boyhood to his mastery of Wall Street, where Mitchell's innovations in municipal finance made him a power broker to the Rockefellers and mayors and governors in all fifty states. After merging law firms with Richard Nixon, Mitchell brilliantly managed Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign and, at his urging, reluctantly agreed to serve as attorney general. With his steely demeanor and trademark pipe, Mitchell commanded awe throughout the government as Nixon’s most trusted adviser, the only man in Washington who could say no to the president.

Chronicling the collapse of the Nixon presidency, The Strong Man follows America’s former top cop on his singular odyssey through the criminal justice system—a tortuous maze of camera crews, congressional hearings, special prosecutors, and federal trials. The path led, ultimately, to a prison cell in Montgomery, Alabama, where Mitchell was welcomed into federal custody by the same men he had appointed to office. Rosen also reveals the dark truth about Mitchell’s marriage to the flamboyant and volatile Martha Mitchell: her slide into alcoholism and madness, their bitter divorce, and the toll it all took on their daughter, Marty.

Based on 250 original interviews and hundreds of thousands of previously unpublished documents and tapes, The Strong Man resolves definitively the central mysteries of the Nixon era: the true purpose of the Watergate break-in, who ordered it, the hidden role played by the Central Intelligence Agency, and those behind the cover-up.

A landmark of history and biography, The Strong Man is that rarest of books: both a model of scholarly research and savvy analysis and a masterful literary achievement.
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Hardcover, 640 pages

Published May 20th 2008 by Doubleday (first published 2008)

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Jun 15, 2008 Christopher rated it 5 of 5 stars

Sometimes you have to wait a lifetime to find out what a person is truly like. James Rosen's splendid book on Nixon Attorney General John Mitchell is a testament to that. One hundred pages of footnotes (including over 250 interviews he personally conducted) in a 609 page book denote the vast and varied sources that Rosen, who started his research as a prodigious 21 year old fresh out of Johns Hopkins University, painstakingly assembled. The result is nothing less than extraordinary.

Along the way...more Sometimes you have to wait a lifetime to find out what a person is truly like. James Rosen's splendid book on Nixon Attorney General John Mitchell is a testament to that. One hundred pages of footnotes (including over 250 interviews he personally conducted) in a 609 page book denote the vast and varied sources that Rosen, who started his research as a prodigious 21 year old fresh out of Johns Hopkins University, painstakingly assembled. The result is nothing less than extraordinary.

Along the way, we see a lot of the "usual suspects" - President Nixon acting in his typical neurotic fashion; a fauning and sycophantic Henry Kissinger, and the hard-nosed Nixon gatekeepers John Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman. In cases like the Kent State shootings, the "Pentagon Papers" affair and the instance of military espionage against the administration - which as Rosen describes extended into the higher-echelons of the admiralty of the U.S. Navy, we see numerous and previously unpublished meeting notes - mostly by Haldeman - that describe the urgency of these monumental events in U.S. history.

But what's notable in this volume is the description of Mitchell, who Rosen reveals to be a more thoughtful, politically astute, and loyal person than others may have previously known. One telling situation was where Mitchell was seeking to extend the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was coming up for renewal in 1970. Mitchell was actually interested in renewing and extending it throughout all the states, and not just those in the deep and historically segregated South. And while Nixon was shown by the White House tapes to be repeatedly anti-Semitic in his comments (particularly in references to the NY Times and the "Pentagon Papers" matter, Mitchell does not volley back similar epithets.

Additionally, Mitchell was shown to be outwardly steady in dealing with his wife Martha, who is shown to be a one-woman wrecking crew - a mentally unbalanced alcoholic who spent many late evenings making incoherent, alcohol-infused calls to newspaper journalists who were more than eager to print her comments in the next day's edition. In fact, her lime-green princess telephone, strategically located on the wall near her bathtub, attains a symbollic and surreal (if not iconic) status in Rosen's mind. But Rosen believes there is no question Mitchell was adversely affected in his AG role because of this (not to mention her profligate spending habits).

Next, Rosen tackles John Dean and his role in the Watergate affair. Rosen's research draws the conclusion that Dean was much more involved in the break-in and the subsequent coverup than earlier thought. In fact Rosen believes Dean ordered the break-in. The evidence for this, of course, is circumstancial, but in my own opinion, highly plausible. From G. Gordon Liddy's unveiling of the "Gemstone" plan, to the "Plumbers" unit, Mitchell is shown to be largely out of the loop; in fact, his lieutenants, Maurice Stans, Jeb Stuart Magruder and Fred LaRue, were given wide latitude in tasks such appropriating money, and making decisions regarding strategies for the election of 1972, and peripheral events -- including dealing with the Watergate burglars. And John Dean was the thread that connected all of them. He was the major link between the White House and CREEP (the Committee to Re-elect the President), and Rosen's conclusions are tantalizing.

In his testimony before the Senate Committee on Watergate, Mitchell crosses swords with North Carolina Senator Sam Ervin (who Rosen rightly describes as a hypocritical, alcoholic segregationist), and lead Senate counsel Sam Dash (who Rosen systematically demonstrates to be both impulsive and vindictive). About this time, President Nixon is shown by the tapes to have consistently have been calling for Mitchell "falling on his sword" and leaving - as if this would cause the Watergate clouds to separate and bring back the sun.

In his post-Nixonian life, Mitchell is shown to have struggled to make a living, and to provide for his two ex-wives (Martha had since served him with divorce papers) and daughter Marty. He was disbarred, so he had to resort to a "consultant" role in Washington. He also had signed with Simon and Schuster for a book (which presumably would center around Watergate and former wife Martha); but later backed out - whereupon, in 1981, he was sued for the return of his advance, which he never managed to pay back.

In summary, Rosen paints a largely sympathetic portrait of Mitchell, and uses sources that became available as late as 2001 to back his claims. It is a powerful story, and Rosen's efforts to set the record straight are direct and pointed. I enjoyed it immensely.

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Dec 22, 2011 alix rated it 4 of 5 stars

Let me preface this four-star review by saying that I really enjoyed reading this book purely from an entertainment standpoint - It's well written, interestingly researched, and has a really compelling central character. However, based on its historical merit and contributions to Nixon/Watergate scholarship, I would have to say it ranks much lower.

The Strong Man starts out in a promising way: Based on previously unused primary sources, the author aims to write a biograhpy of former Attorney Gene...more Let me preface this four-star review by saying that I really enjoyed reading this book purely from an entertainment standpoint - It's well written, interestingly researched, and has a really compelling central character. However, based on its historical merit and contributions to Nixon/Watergate scholarship, I would have to say it ranks much lower.

The Strong Man starts out in a promising way: Based on previously unused primary sources, the author aims to write a biograhpy of former Attorney General Mitchell that stands in contrast to his public image as a tough, unshakable guy who only adheres to the law when it suits him and his colleagues. Reading about Mitchell's early career as a bond lawyer was certainly fascinating, and lays the groundwork for explaining his rise to a high-level cabinet position in the '60s. However, it soon becomes clear that this is a book written by or for Mitchell apologists. In a nutshell, the author asserts he was wrongly blamed/framed for everything from ITT and Vesco to Watergate and the later HUD scandals. This may or may not be true, but reading a 500-page tome that consistantly says that at every turn, government officials, law enforcement, legal characters, and the press all consistently strove to make Mitchell a scapegoat is a little hard to take seriously.

The majority of the book is taken up by Watergate, as the subtitle indicates, but it's little more than a parlor game, pitting Dean and Magruder's accounts of the indicent against Mitchell's. According to the author, on all counts Dean and Magruder lied, and Mitchell was the sole honest player. (Interesting, he also uses G. Gordon Liddy's biograhpy as a true/honest source, as Liddy claimed the Fifth during the trials, and thus, he surmises, his memoirs must be an honest account.)Again, his assessment may be accurate or may be a completely farce, but there's no way really to prove any of it, which I think is the ultimate error in a book like this.

Watergate was so much more than a "third rate burglary" and to reduce it and its players to these parlor games is to ignore its larger ramifications on everything from the power of the executive office and campaign finance reform, to the role of the judiciary and the press in instances like this. Sadly, in trying to vindicate Mitchell, the author reduces him, and Watergate, to a little he-said/he-said footnote in American political history.(less)

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Oct 26, 2009 Grace rated it 5 of 5 stars

James Rosen's book presents the facts surrounding John Mitchell and the "Nixon years" in a straight forward, engaging manner. Though some of the facts are difficult to hear, and some of the sections seem endless because the story itself becomes tedious, this is a book that should be read by every US citizen!

Rosen's massive research, conducted over a decade or more of intense study and analysis, sets the standard for all the biographers who follow. It answers questions for those of us who lived...more

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Nov 28, 2009 Eric Roston added it

The U.S. history book of the year. This book is the result of 17 years of absolutely astonishing research and investigation. If you thought you knew everything about Watergate, then you must feast your eyes on the previously unpublished material Rosen has dug up.

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Aug 10, 2009 Jeff rated it 3 of 5 stars

A full report of the attorney general and his role in Watergate. I enjoyed it.

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Jul 22, 2009 Paul rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Watergate/politic junkies

Obviously sympathetic to Mitchell but pretty brutal on everyone else this is none-the-less a good read that still comes across fairly well balanced. Lots of detail from newly available sources the story does not get bogged down. Reads like a who done it. Real politic by the pros.

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Oct 23, 2008 Andy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: american-politics

I have been in a Nixon & Watergate state of mind. This was a very good book and somewhat exonerates AG Mitchell from most (not all) of the Watergate crimes. It also cast some aspersions about John Dean who some have heralded a hero or whistleblower of Watergate.

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Sep 01, 2008 Steve rated it 4 of 5 stars

Tedious but very compelling. One constant of Washington is scandal. I highly recommend this for anyone interested in understanding the challenges all administrations face to vary degrees.

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Oct 25, 2008 Laura rated it 4 of 5 stars

A really interesting book--you really feel like you understand what happened during Watergate.

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Aug 21, 2008 Thomas rated it 4 of 5 stars

I guess John wasn't so bad after all...

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Nov 06, 2009 Grace Castle rated it 5 of 5 stars

Rosen's long-awaited masterpiece is a magnificient addition to the analysis of our nation's history---in particular the Nixon presidency years. It should be required reading in every university-level American history class.

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Sep 10, 2009 Paul rated it 5 of 5 stars

The John Mitchell biography written by one of America's brightest reporters. Fascinating read

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