This is Martha Beall Mitchell.

If the phrase: "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you" ever applied to anybody, it applied to Martha.

Martha was a pampered, Southern Belle who married a man that eventually became both the US Attorney General and a convicted criminal. His name was John Mitchell.

From all accounts, Mitchell worshiped his jovial wife. When Richard Nixon appointed John Mitchell to be Attorney General, Martha became a media star. She had a habit of speaking her mind but John was always there to defend her. That is, until Nixon's Plumbers were arrested for breaking into the Democratic Headquarters, located in the Watergate Hotel.

According to Watergate trivia, the Mitchells resided at the Watergate Hotel when the break-in happened. John Mitchell -at the time- had retired as AG and was in charge of Nixon's Committee to Reelect the President or CREEP. Mitchell was also one of the men in charge of Nixon's covert agents known as the Plumbers. Five Plumbers were arrested when they were caught trying to do some creative remodeling on June 17, 1972. By October of that year the Washington Post had made a connection between Martha's husband and the Plumbers when they reported Mitchell had posted bail for the men.

Martha Beall Mitchell wasn't about to let her man go down alone. She had seen things and she told the world:

"I know dirty things. I saw dirty things. I am not going to stand for all those dirty tricks that go on."

This was an exchange between Martha and her favorite reporter, Helen Thomas. Martha made a lot of phone calls to a lot of people. She had stopped being delightful and had become a liability to both her husband and to Nixon. Rumormongers spread tales of her supposed alcoholism and implied she was a negligent mother. She lost her marriage, the love of her daughter and in May, 1976 she lost her life to bone marrow cancer.

"I want to be sure my side is revealed and that people know I'm not sitting here a mental case or an alcoholic."

In March, 1974 John Mitchell was indicted for conspiring to thwart the Watergate investigation along with Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Colson, Gordon C. Strachan, Robert Mardian, and Kenneth Parkinson. In February of 1975, Mitchell was found guilty of obstruction of justice, conspiracy and perjury. He entered prison in 1977. He dropped dead in front of his house in 1988.

Martha Mitchell might have been a little off the beam but she was right about Watergate.

The princess Cassandra could foretell the future. When she spurned the love of the god Apollo, he cursed her so that no one would ever believe her predictions. That drove Cassandra crazy. Psychiatrists used to call this condition the Cassandra syndrome. Now they call it Martha Mitchell syndrome.

Martha's Present Day Counterpart:

Maybe we're all a little like Martha