On this day, June 22, in 1977, John N. Mitchell became the first former U.S. attorney general to go to prison as he began serving a sentence for his role in the Watergate coverup.
Mitchell was the last of 25 Watergate defendants to go to prison, serving 19 months for conspiracy, obstruction of justice and lying under oath.
Mitchell, a key adviser to President Nixon, stepped down as attorney general in 1972 to become director of the Committee to Re-Elect the President. The organization used a slush fund to pay burglars to break into the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate complex to photograph documents and plant microphones.
After his release from prison, Mitchell lived in Georgetown, where he died in 1988. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
-Scott McCabe
