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John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate
Knopf
May 2008
On Sale: May 1, 2008
640 pages
ISBN: 0385508646
EAN: 9780385508643
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
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of previously unpublished documents and tapes, The Strong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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