Editing John N. Mitchell (section)

==Political career==
[[File:John Mitchell swearing in.jpg|thumb|left|Mitchell is sworn in as Attorney General of the United States, January 22, 1969. Chief Justice [[Earl Warren]] administers the oath while President [[Richard Nixon]] looks on.]] In 1967, the firm of Caldwell, Trimble & Mitchell, where Mitchell was lead partner, merged with Richard Nixon's firm, [[Mudge Rose Guthrie Alexander & Ferdon|Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie, & Alexander]].  Nixon was then officially in "political retirement" but was quietly organizing a return to politics in the [[1968 United States Presidential Election|1968 Presidential Election]]. Mitchell, with his many contacts in local government, became an important strategic confidant to Nixon, who referred to him as "the heavyweight."<ref>{{cite web |title=Attorney General: John Newton Mitchell |url=https://www.justice.gov/ag/bio/mitchell-john-newton |website=www.justice.gov |access-date=January 23, 2022 |language=en |date=October 23, 2014}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Perlstein |first1=Rick |title=Before the storm : Barry Goldwater and the unmaking of the American consensus |date=2001 |publisher=Hill and Wang |location=New York City|isbn=9780809028580 |edition=1st}}</ref>

===Nixon campaign manager===
In 1968 John Mitchell agreed to become Nixon's presidential [[campaign manager]]. During his successful 1968 campaign, Nixon turned over the details of the day-to-day operations to Mitchell.

===Vietnam===
Allegedly, Mitchell also played a central role in [[Anna Chennault#Paris Peace Accords|covert attempts]] to sabotage the 1968 [[Paris Peace Accords]]  which could have ended the Vietnam War (the “Chennault Affair”).<ref>[[KC Johnson|Robert "KC" Johnson]]. [http://hnn.us/articles/60446.html “Did Nixon Commit Treason in 1968? What The New LBJ Tapes Reveal”]. [[History News Network]], January 26, 2009. Transcript from {{YouTube|i10VxpAGQUg|audio recording}} of [[Lyndon B. Johnson|President Lyndon Johnson]]: "The next thing that we got our teeth in was one of his associates — a fellow named Mitchell, who is running his campaign, who's the real [[Sherman Adams]] ([[Dwight D. Eisenhower|Eisenhower]]'s chief of staff) of the operation, in effect said to a businessman that 'we're going to handle this like we handled the Fortas matter, unquote. We're going to frustrate the President by saying to the South Vietnamese, and the Koreans, and the Thailanders {{sic}}, "Beware of [[Lyndon B. Johnson|Johnson]]."' 'At the same time, we're going to say to Hanoi, "I [Nixon] can make a better deal than he [[Lyndon B. Johnson|(Johnson)]] has, because I'm fresh and new, and I don't have to demand as much as he does in the light of past positions."'"</ref><ref>{{cite book|first=Seymour|last=Hersh|authorlink=Seymour Hersh|url=https://archive.org/details/priceofpower00hers|title=The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House|publisher=[[Summit Books]]| date=1983 |<!-- [quote=“I'm speaking on behalf of Mr. Nixon. It's very important that our Vietnamese friends understand our Republican position and I hope you have made that clear to them".  p. 21.]--> quote="A few days before the election, she wrote, Mitchell telephoned with an urgent message. [[Anna Chennault|'Anna,' (Chennault)]] she quotes him as saying. 'I'm speaking on behalf of Mr. Nixon. It's very important that our Vietnamese friends understand our Republican position and I hope you have made that clear to them.'".}}</ref><ref>[[Jules Witcover]]. [http://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/ecom/MasterServlet/GetItemDetailsHandler?iN=9780801882470&qty=1&source=2&viewMode=3&loggedIN=false&JavaScript=y “The Making of an Ink-Stained Wretch: Half a Century Pounding the Political Beat”]{{dead link|date=November 2017 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}. [[Johns Hopkins University Press]], 2005, [https://books.google.com/books?id=ePRIONzLmEoC&pg=PA131#PPA132,M1 p131.] "I tracked down [[Anna Chennault]] (...) she insisted she had acted under instructions from the Nixon campaign in contacting the Saigon regime. 'The only people who knew about the whole operation,' she told me, 'were Nixon, John Mitchell and [[John Tower]] [senator from Texas and Nixon campaign figure], and they're all dead. But they knew what I was doing. Anyone who knows about these thing knows I was getting orders to do these thing. I couldn't do anything without instructions.'".</ref><ref>{{cite book|first1=Clark M.|last1=Clifford|authorlink1=Clark M. Clifford|first2=Richard C.|last2=Holbrooke|authorlink2=Richard C. Holbrooke|title=Counsel to the President: A Memoir|publisher=[[Random House]]|location=New York City|date=1991|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eeJ4AAAAMAAJ|page=582| isbn=9780394569956 |quote=It was not difficult for Ambassador Diem to pass information to Anna Chennault, who was in contact with John Mitchell, she said later, 'at least once a day.'}}</ref>

===Attorney general===
[[File:President Nixon conferring with Attorney-General Mitchell, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and John D. Ehrlichman` - NARA - 194722.tif|thumb|300px|Mitchell, [[Richard Nixon]], [[J. Edgar Hoover]] and [[John Ehrlichman]] in May 1971]]
After Nixon became president in January 1969, he appointed Mitchell as [[Attorney General of the United States]] while making an unprecedented direct appeal to [[FBI]] Director [[J. Edgar Hoover]] that the usual background investigation not be conducted.<ref>{{cite book |author-link=Curt Gentry|first=Curt |last=Gentry |title=J. Edgar Hoover: The Man And The Secrets |url=https://archive.org/details/jedgarhoovermans00gent|url-access=registration|year=1991 |publisher=W. W. Norton |location=New York City|isbn=0-393-02404-0 |page=[https://archive.org/details/jedgarhoovermans00gent/page/616 616]}}</ref> Mitchell remained in office from 1969 until he resigned in 1972 to manage Nixon's reelection campaign.

===Law and order===
Mitchell believed that the government's need for "[[law and order (politics)|law and order]]" justified restrictions on civil liberties. He advocated the use of wiretaps in national security cases without obtaining a court order (''[[United States v. U.S. District Court]]'', [[Nixon wiretaps]]) and the right of police to employ the preventive detention of criminal suspects. He brought [[conspiracy (crime)|conspiracy]] charges against critics of the [[Vietnam War]], likening them to [[brown shirts]] of the [[Nazi Germany|Nazi era]] in Germany.

Mitchell expressed a reluctance to involve the Justice Department in some [[civil rights]] issues. "The Department of Justice is a law enforcement agency," he told reporters. "It is not the place to carry on a program aimed at curing the ills of society." However, he also told activists, "You will be better advised to watch what we do, not what we say."{{sfn|Rosen|page=136}}<ref name="auto">{{cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/14/opinion/essay-watch-what-we-do.html|title=Watch What We Do|first=William|last=Safire|date=November 14, 1988|work=[[The New York Times]]|access-date=July 22, 2017|author-link=William Safire}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=91IFAYFhtOMC&pg=PA4|title=Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations|first=James H.|last=Billington|date=2010|publisher=Courier Corporation|location=Chelmsford, Massachusetts|isbn=9780486472881|access-date=July 22, 2017|via=Google Books}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=POhHuoGILNYC&pg=PA253|title=Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past|first=Bruce|last=Bartlett|date=January 8, 2008|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|location=New York City|isbn=9780230611382|access-date=July 22, 2017|via=Google Books}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eNrMbvyHhrIC&pg=PA267|title=We Have No Leaders: African Americans in the Post-Civil Rights Era|first=Robert Charles|last=Smith|date=July 22, 1996|publisher=[[SUNY Press]]|location=New York City|isbn=9780791431351|access-date=July 22, 2017|via=Google Books}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=whg05Z4Nwo0C&pg=PA4|title=The Oxford Dictionary of American Quotations|first1=Hugh|last1=Rawson|first2=Margaret|last2=Miner|date=2006|publisher=[[Oxford University Press|Oxford University Press USA]]|location=New York City|isbn=9780195168235|access-date=July 22, 2017|via=Google Books}}</ref>

===School desegregation===
Near the beginning of his administration, Nixon ordered Mitchell to go slow on desegregation of schools in the South, in fulfillment of Nixon's "[[Southern strategy|Southern Strategy]]" which accused him of focusing on gaining support from Southern white voters. After being instructed by the federal courts that segregation was unconstitutional and that the executive branch was required to enforce the rulings of the courts, Mitchell began to comply, threatening to withhold federal funds from those school systems that were still segregated and threatening legal action against them.

School segregation had been struck down as unconstitutional by a unanimous Supreme Court decision in 1954 (''[[Brown v. Board of Education]]''), but in 1955, the Court ruled that desegregation needed to be accomplished only with "[[all deliberate speed]]," <ref>Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U.S. 294 (1955)</ref> which many Southern states interpreted as an invitation to delay. It was not until 1969 that the Supreme Court renounced the "all deliberate speed" rule and declared that further delay in accomplishing desegregation was no longer permissible.<ref>See, e.g., Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, 396 U.S. 19 (1969)</ref>  As a result, some 70% of black children were still attending segregated schools in 1968 when Nixon became president.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB121158799673718969|title=Reconsidering John Mitchell|first=Jonathan|last=Karl|date=May 24, 2008|access-date=July 22, 2017|work=[[Wall Street Journal]]}}</ref> By 1972, as a result of President Nixon's policy this percentage had decreased to 8%, a greater decrease than in any of the previous three presidents. Enrollment of black children in desegregated schools rose from 186,000 in 1969 to 3 million in 1970.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://humanevents.com/2008/05/09/reviewing-the-strong-man-john-mitchell-and-the-secrets-of-watergate/|title=Reviewing The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate|first=George|last=Marlin|date=May 9, 2008|work=[[Human Events]]|access-date=July 22, 2017|archive-date=August 28, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160828094816/http://humanevents.com/2008/05/09/reviewing-the-strong-man-john-mitchell-and-the-secrets-of-watergate/|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/05/a-surprise-but-not-a-success/302488/|title=A Surprise, but not a Success|first=Tamar|last=Jacoby|date=May 2002|work=[[Atlantic]]|access-date=May 2, 2023}}</ref>

===Public safety===
From the outset, Mitchell strove to suppress what many Americans saw as major threats to their safety: urban crime, black unrest, and war resistance. He called for the use of [[No-knock warrant|"no-knock" warrants]] for police to enter homes, [[frisking]] suspects without a warrant, [[Telephone tapping|wiretapping]], [[preventive detention]], the use of federal troops to repress crime in the capital, a restructured Supreme Court, and a slowdown in school desegregation. "This country is going so far to the right you won't recognize it," he told a reporter.<ref name=":0">{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/10/obituaries/john-n-mitchell-dies-at-75-major-figure-in-watergate.html|title=John N. Mitchell Dies at 75; Major Figure in Watergate|date=November 10, 1988|work=[[The New York Times]]}}</ref>

There had been national outrage over the 1969 burning [[Cuyahoga River]]. President Nixon had signed the National Environmental Policy Act on New Year's Day in 1970, establishing the [[United States Environmental Protection Agency]] (EPA).  Nixon appointed [[William Ruckelshaus]] to head the agency, which opened its doors December 2, 1970. Mitchell gave a Press Conference  December 18, 1970: “I would like to call attention to an area of activity that we have not publicly emphasized lately, but which I feel, because of the changing events, deserves your attention. I refer to the pollution control litigation, with particular reference to our work with the new Environmental Protection Agency, now headed by William Ruckelshaus.&nbsp; As in the case of other government departments and agencies, EPA refers civil and criminal suits to the Department of Justice, which determines whether there is a base for prosecution and of course, if we find it so, we proceed with court action.... And today, I would like to announce that we are filing suit this morning against the [[Jones and Laughlin Steel Company|Jones and Laughlin Steel Corporation]] for discharging substantial quantities of cyanide into the Cuyahoga River near Cleveland. Mr. Ruckelshaus has said, when he asked the Department to file this suit, that the 180-day notice filed against the company had expired. We are filing a civil suit to seek immediate injunctive relief under the Refuse Act of 1899 and the Federal Water Pollution Act to halt the discharge of these deleterious materials into the river.”<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/ag/legacy/2011/08/23/12-18-1970.pdf|title=Press Conference Attorney John Mitchell 12-18-1970}}</ref>

===Dirty tricks===
In an early sample of the "dirty tricks" that would later mark the 1971–72 campaign, Mitchell approved a $10,000 subsidy to employ an [[American Nazi Party]] faction in a bizarre effort to get Alabama Governor [[George Wallace]] off the ballots in California. The scheme failed.<ref name=":0" />