Woodward, Bernstein, Mitchell, Liddy, Felt … Fifty years after Watergate, the names of its protagonists remain in the collective memory of the United States, even if there are many more those who had something to do with the scandal that ended Richard Nixon’s presidency.

They are all men, but Some women too of Watergate.

When is this week’s birthday? half a century of raids to the offices of the Democratic Party that triggered that crisis, the country remembers many ways That moment.

Books, TV series, exhibitions Not only the best-known names, such as Nixon himself or Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein – the Washington Post journalists who discovered the scandal – open, but also many other protagonists, volunteers and not, of that time.

The portraits of many of them hang these days at the National Portrait Museum in Washington, on display “Watergate: Portrait and Intrigue”looking at what happened.

And she is also, as Kate Clarke, curator of the exhibition and historian of this Smithsonian museum points out, a tribute to journalismwithout which Watergate would have remained an event apparently minor -the raid on the offices of the Democratic National Committee- without political consequences.

Dedicated Time magazine numerous covers at the Watergate, and some can be seen in this exhibit. They are iconic images that define Nixon and those who ruled with him very well.

the palace guard

So it is with the “palace guard”. Nixon and his four trusted men appear in a collage made with the presidential seal and which seeks to show, as Clarke pointed out, that that group of advisors and senior officials it kept Nixon “isolated” and removed from reality and public opinion.

That “guard” was made up of the chief of staff, Bob HaldemanNational Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, Attorney General, John Mitchell and the counselor John Ehlrichman.

All minus Kissinger ended up serving a sentence for conspiracy and obstruction to justice – for trying to hide the event and its relationship with the White House.

Another cartoon that did the cover of Time, with many of the councilors circling Nixon and pointing to each other and surrounded by cables, shows how the more faithful they ceased to be when they saw themselves in the water up to their necks and decided to denounce and accuse.

The drama of John and Martha Mitchell

Of all of themJohn Mitchell is considered to be the “mastermind” of Watergate.. He led the president’s re-election committee and, as Clarke recalls, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on numerous illegal operationsincluding wiretaps and microphones like the ones they planned to install in Democratic offices.

Another of the covers dedicated to Mitchell features him in a bust made with a bottle of bleach in which he covers his hand with his mouth. He wasn’t going to say anything that could hurt his head.

Quite the opposite of his wife, Martha Mitchell, who knew a lot -or all there is to know- about Watergate and as Kate Clarke remembers he had every intention of telling the press.

In the days following the search and arrest of the suspects, it was held several days against her will by a former FBI agent who worked for her husband and who prevented him from speaking to reporters.

Though he did not keep silent after. Even Nixon himself stated in the famous interview with British journalist David Frost that, without the testimony of Martha Mitchell, Watergate would remain an anecdote.

And recently this too has become known was one of Bob Woodward’s sources. Mitchell was then another “deep throat” as the owner of said nickname, the FBI Deputy Director Marco Feltri.

Her figure never fails to arouse charm: actress Julia Roberts plays Mitchell in a television series, Gaslit, also starring Sean Penn.

In the Smithsonian exhibition, Mitchell’s painting is opposite that of two other women who, as Kate Clarke points out, also played a role in that historical moment.

The loyal secretary and the passionate deputy

On the one hand, Nixon’s faithful secretary, Rose Mary Woodthat “accidentally” -so he claimed- deleted a conversation between Haldeman and Nixon which allegedly proved that the president was aware of the spying attempt in Democratic offices.

and on the other Congresswoman Barbara Jordanwho opened the Watergate commission of inquiry with an impassioned speech in which he invited its members to work to find out if the president had been conducting “not condoned by the Constitution.”

A mission, that of the legislator, to which this exhibition too gives great importance.

And although at a time like the present, when Congress is investigating the assault on Capitol Hill, “anyone can think there were darker times” in the country’s political history, Clarke pointed out, this exhibit also seeks to clarify. “what are the limits of presidential power” and “who is responsible for controlling the president”.

“Is it Congress? Is it the people? Is it the media?” This is the question “.

EFE

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