Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with RetroPod, a show about the past, rediscovered.

In early May of 1973, at the apex of the Richard Nixon Watergate scandal, one of the most

truly bizarre press conferences in political history was conducted by a winking woman wearing a white cowl necktop

and a sparkly brooch. It was Martha Mitchell, the wife of Nixon's ex-attorney general.

And as she stood speaking outside her lawyer's office in New York, it was clear why reporters

had nicknamed her the mouth of the South.

You want me to wave the queue too?

I'm a copy of the deposition.

The mouth of the South had just finished giving a deposition in the Watergate case.

By then, most of the political world had dismissed her as crazy for some wild claims she had made

about the Nixon administration.

And this was a problem, of course, for Nixon because her husband was John Mitchell, the

country's former Attorney General.

Martha Mitchell arrived on the Washington social scene in 1969 as her husband became Nixon's

right-hand man. She was glamorous, funny, and often spoke off the cuff, including on evening

talk shows to joke about anti-war protests. She'd even call reporters to gossip about politics,

and she had a huge laugh, as the country saw during that press conference.

Right, Henry!

Right, right, right.

But the country wasn't laughing.

A vast criminal investigation into the Watergate break-in and cover-up was underway.

Prosecutors, reporters, everyone had questions.

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