Leave it to Washington never to get over some good ol’ fashioned mud-slinging. …
Former Nixon official (and current Deputy National Finance Chairman for the John McCain campaign) Fred Malek and his wife, Marlene, held a book party for Fox News correspondent James Rosen on Friday night at Malek’s McLean home overlooking the Potomac.
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Rosen’s new book is “The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate” (Mitchell was the U.S. attorney general during the Nixon administration and was convicted of illegal activities in 1975 for his role in the Watergate scandal).
During Rosen’s remarks, Deborah Gore Dean (a former Housing and Urban Development employee during the Reagan years who now runs Gore Dean Antiques in Georgetown) gave Rosen a tobacco pipe that Mitchell smoked just before he passed away. Gore Dean’s mother, Mary Gore Dean, was a close companion of Mitchell’s (there is plenty of speculation that it was more than that …) and Deborah remained close to John.
But after giving Rosen the pipe, she had to try to get Rosen to pipe down during his comments when they started to drift toward the topic of Martha Mitchell, John’s colorful wife whom Rosen called “[Mitchell’s] volatile, slightly crazy wife” during a recent interview with C-SPAN’s Brian Lamb.
Martha is not always portrayed favorably in the book (she was known in many circles as “the mouth of the South”), so Gore Dean did her best to encourage Rosen not to speak ill of the departed (Martha died in 1976), although he returned to the topic a few times.
“Sssh … ” Gore Dean implored of Rosen, a subtle suggestion that he eventually took to heart, moving on to lighter topics.
