John Newton Mitchell was the 67th Attorney General of the United States under President Richard Nixon. Prior to that, he had been a municipal bond lawyer, chairman of Nixon's 1968 presidential campaign, and one of Nixon's closest personal friends.
After his tenure as U.S. Attorney General, he served as chairman of Nixon's 1972 presidential campaign. Due to multiple crimes he committed in the Watergate affair, Mitchell was sentenced to prison in 1977 and served 19 months. As Attorney General, he was noted for personifying the "law-and-order" positions of the Nixon Administration, amid several high-profile anti-war demonstrations.
Wikipedia
“This country is going so far to the right you won't recognize it.”
To a reporter, mentioned in :
John N. Mitchell Dies at 75; Major Figure in Watergate, November 10, 1988, The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/10/obituaries/john-n-mitchell-dies-at-75-major-figure-in-watergate.html?pagewanted=all,
“You will be better advised to watch what we do instead of what we say.”
Remarks (overheard by reporters) in July 1969 after meeting with a group of black civil rights workers, who protested the Administration's action on the Voting Rights Act of 1965
reported in :
The Washington Post, "Watch What We Do," editorial (July 7, 1969), p. A22.
Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations, James H. Billington, Library of Congress, 2010, Courier Corporation, Google Books https://books.google.com/books?id=91IFAYFhtOMC&pg=PA4&lpg=PA4&dq=Mitchell,
Watch What We Do, William Safire, 14 November 1988, The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/14/opinion/essay-watch-what-we-do.html,
Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past, Bruce, Bartlett, 8 January 2008, Palgrave Macmillan, Google Books https://books.google.com/books?id=POhHuoGILNYC&pg=PA253&lpg=PA253&dq=Watch-What-We-Do,
We Have No Leaders: African Americans in the Post-Civil Rights Era, Robert Charles, Smith, 22 July 1996, SUNY Press, Google Books https://books.google.com/books?id=eNrMbvyHhrIC&pg=PA267&lpg=PA267&dq=Watch-What-We-Do,
The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate, James, Rosen, 20 May 2008, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Google Books https://books.google.com/books?id=fHIGQTGemnAC&pg=PA136&lpg=PA136&dq=watch-what-we-do,
The Oxford Dictionary of American Quotations, Rawson, Hugh; Miner, Margaret., 2006, Oxford University Press, USA, Google Books https://books.google.com/books?id=whg05Z4Nwo0C&pg=PA4&lpg=PA4&dq=You-will-be-better-advised,
Quoted by :
Katharine Graham Personal History, 22 July 1997, Alfred A. Knopf (via Google Books) https://books.google.com/books?id=jkxz77hC_48C&pg=PA465&dq=tit,
The Watergate Watershed -- A Turning Point for a Nation and a Newspaper, Katharine Graham, January 28, 1997, The Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/watergate/stories/graham.htm,
[Bernstein, Carl, Woodward, Bob, All The President's Men, 1974, Simon and Schuster, New York, 105]
