Mitchell's dishing led to downfall of Nixon

The Martha Mitchell birthplace and childhood home located at 402 W. Fourth Ave. in Pine Bluff now belongs to local businessman Bob Abbott. He is offering the historic house for sale. (Special to The Commercial/Bob Abbott)
The Martha Mitchell birthplace and childhood home located at 402 W. Fourth Ave. in Pine Bluff now belongs to local businessman Bob Abbott. He is offering the historic house for sale. (Special to The Commercial/Bob Abbott)

Before the freedom of the individual automobile replaced railroad passenger service and the variety and convenience of Walmart subjugated Main Street department stores, downtown Pine Bluff was a center of commerce and the major metropolitan destination for all of southeast Arkansas.

This was the Pine Bluff that Martha Beall Jennings Mitchell grew up in. Born Sept. 2, 1918, in a home located at 402 W. Fourth Ave., Mitchell came to national fame as result of her involvement in the Watergate scandal and the investigation that ran from 1972 through 1974, leading to the resignation of then-President Richard Nixon.

Mitchell's birthplace was constructed in 1887 by her maternal grandfather, C.M. Fergusson, who ran a wholesale grocery company in the city. Mitchell inherited the home later in life.

After graduating from Pine Bluff High School in 1936, she attended college in Missouri, Arkansas and Florida but ended up returning to Pine Bluff, where she went to work at the Pine Bluff Arsenal. Her work eventually carried her to Washington, D.C., with Brig. Gen. Augustin Mitchell Prentiss. In D.C., she met her first husband, U.S. Army officer Clyde Jennings Jr. They had a son, Clyde Jay Jennings, on Nov. 2, 1947, but the marriage ended in divorce 10 years later.

Soon afterward, she met an up-and-coming young attorney by the name of John N. Mitchell. Their whirlwind romance soon led to matrimony, with the couple tying the knot on Dec. 30, 1957.

John Mitchell was well-to-do, earning a quarter-million dollars annually as a partner in a Manhattan, N.Y., law firm. They had a daughter, Martha Elizabeth Mitchell, born Jan. 10, 1961.

At the end of 1966, the law offices of Nixon merged with the firm where John Mitchell was a partner, resulting in the group Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie, Alexander and Mitchell. This led to Mitchell being appointed U.S. attorney general when Nixon became president in 1968.

According to a variety of sources, during the following years, Martha developed the habit of having a few martinis in the evening before ringing up various reporters to share an insider's track on political gossip or other tidbits of juicy information she gleaned while sorting through John's documents and overhearing private conversations. The Pine Bluff native's national fame grew with cameo appearances on popular TV programs such as "Laugh-In" and on numerous talk shows. By November 1970, the boisterous socialite's reputation had grown to the point that a Gallup poll at the time showed that her name and face were familiar to 76% of the American public, earning her the nickname "Mouth of the South."

Martha Mitchell is revered as being one of the primary sources of information leaked to Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who broke the Watergate cover-up and put the story onto the national stage.

She is also said to be the primary source behind important insider information confirmed by the mysterious character commonly referred to as "Deep Throat" in the press and in the 1976 movie "All the President's Men," starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford. Deep Throat was later revealed to be an FBI investigator by the name of William Mark Felts Sr. Martha and John Mitchell separated in 1973, and she died three years later at age 58 in a Washington hospital.

Pine Bluff businessman Bob Abbott has his own association with the story.

"Martha is one of the better-known personalities from Pine Bluff," he said. "I entered into contract to buy the old house from her a year before Martha passed away, but she didn't sign the deed until just before she died. She had been ill and in the hospital, but doctors didn't expect her to go so fast until she had a sudden heart attack.

"Nixon said in an interview with David Frost, 'If it hadn't been for Martha, there'd have been no Watergate because John [Mitchell] wasn't minding the store. He was crazy about Martha in the spring of '72 and letting McGruder and his boys [the Watergate burglars] run this thing. If John had been minding the store, Watergate never would have happened.''

Abbott said The New York Times and The Washington Post have called him over the years while doing pieces on Martha Mitchell but that the story doesn't get as much play here in Arkansas.

"Even today, there's still a national interest in Martha," Abbott said. "A big-time, seven-episode mini-series for Starz network featuring Julia Roberts playing Martha and Sean Penn as John is being filmed at this time. Some New York fellows have visited the house and spent a whole week here filming for an Epix series titled 'Slow Burn.' The first hourlong installment was all about Martha and her role in Watergate."

Abbott said he's not able to keep the house going any longer.

"I'm getting on up in years now and would like to sell the house," he said. "I have a couple of well-known figures who've expressed interest in its purchase. I didn't buy the place with the intention of turning it into a museum, but when she died and was buried here, every major newspaper and television network swarmed the town wanting to go through the place. I got it on the National Historic Registry in 1978 and began opening up for tours from time to time. Of course, covid has slowed that down quite a bit."

The U.S. Highway 65 Pine Bluff bypass was built in the 1960s. It had a nickname in those early days of "Suicide Boulevard" because there were so many fatal accidents when it first opened. But Abbott worked with others in Pine Bluff to get the stretch of highway renamed.

"Newspaper editor Paul Greenburg, Jim Burns and myself set out to have the expressway renamed for Martha Mitchell," Abbott said. "On the second anniversary of her death, an 8-mile-long section that runs through northern Pine Bluff was designated 'Martha Mitchell Expressway.'"

"On May 31, 1981, during the fifth anniversary of her demise," Abbott said, "a bronze bust of Mitchell was dedicated on the Civic Center Grounds. She is known nationally as the first big time whistleblower."

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