Being Candid with Kandy

When Martha Mitchell's runaway tongue provoked demands that Husband John silence her (TIME, Dec. 5), the Attorney General responded with the bemused suggestion that she speak henceforth in Swahili. Last week, his glacial restraint thawed by two Scotch-and-waters and the gentle prodding of Kandy Stroud, an attractive blonde reporter for Women's Wear Daily, John Mitchell topped even Martha at her loquacious best.

The Justice Department complained later that the conversation with Kandy at a Women's National Press Club party was not an interview, that her account was "inaccurate" and that it resulted from "fragmentary and overheard conversations at a social gathering." Kandy acknowledged that she had written from memory, having taken no notes during the exchange. But, because the quotes had a definite Mitchellesque texture, Washington lapped up every word. Items from the published story:

> Henry Kissinger is "an egocentric maniac. He loves to appear in the newspapers with Jill St. John. But when he gets back to the office, he's really a brilliant man." (The term "egocentric maniac" would only have been spoken in jest, Mitchell aides maintain.)

> Arkansas Governor Winthrop Rockefeller, a Republican seeking a third term, will "win by buying the votes of the far left or the hard right or the black vote."

> There is "no such thing as the New Left. This country is going so far right you are not even going to recognize it."

> "Stupid kids" who oppose Administration policies "don't know the issues. They pick the rhetoric that they want to hear right off the top of an issue and never finish reading to the bottom. The professors are just as bad, if not worse. They don't know anything. Nor do these stupid bastards who are ruining our educational institutions."

Some of the statements attributed to Mitchell were unexceptionable, such as his praise of President Nixon as "probably the most informed man in the U.S. today." But the Attorney General's zingers suggest that he and Martha might study Swahili together.

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