Terms of engagement Cox was at Berkeley on May 16, 1973, when Secretary of Defense Elliot Richardson, President Nixon's nominee for attorney general, called him to ask if he would consider taking the position of Special Prosecutor in the
Watergate affair. Cox had woken up that morning, the day before his 61st birthday, without hearing in his right ear (a condition his doctor would tell him a few days later was permanent), which dampened his enthusiasm for the job—the sensing of which, perhaps, increased Richardson's willingness to make concessions to obtain Cox's consent. Richardson, for his part, was getting "desperate" according to his aide John T. Smith. It was clear that the Senate would make the appointment of a Special Prosecutor a condition of Richardson's confirmation. Richardson's staff had prepared a list of 100 candidates. Richardson did not recall how many he had contacted before Cox. Richardson satisfied Cox's concern over independence over two days of phone conversations, and Richardson reduced it to writing. The resulting "compact" was extraordinary even under the circumstances. The scope was "all offenses arising out of the 1972 election … involving the president, the White House staff or presidential appointments." It was thus not limited to Watergate. The assumption of responsibility for a case was left to the discretion of the Special Prosecutor, who also had sole discretion to decide "whether and to what extent he will inform or consult with the attorney general" on any matter being investigated. The White House thus lost its access to the investigation. In addition, the Special Prosecutor was granted the right to discuss his findings and progress with the press at his discretion. Finally, Cox could be dismissed only by Richardson and only for "extraordinary improprieties"—a standard virtually impossible to meet. The importance of the selection to Richardson's confirmation was highlighted by the fact that he brought Cox along to his hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Democratic Whip Senator
Robert Byrd asked Cox if he needed broader authority. Cox replied that he already had "the whip hand." Cox said that the only restraint the president or the Justice Department had over him was to fire him. He also vowed that he would follow the evidence even if it led "to the oval office." Richardson was confirmed.
Reaction The president publicly welcomed the selection and, consistent with his new public relations offensive, commended Richardson's "determination" to get to the bottom of the affair. Privately, Nixon seethed with anger. In his memoir he said: "If Richardson searched specifically for the man whom I least trusted, he could hardly have done better." Richardson, however, thought he had the best man for the job, because once Cox cleared the president there would be no hint that he colluded with Nixon or even that he was sympathetic. Richardson had perhaps been misled about what his assignment was (and what the president's true intentions were) when the president instructed him the night
Kleindienst was dismissed to "get to the bottom of it" "no matter who[m] it hurts." Richardson was to "stand firm" only on two issues: presidential conversations were to remain privileged and national security matters were not to be investigated. Otherwise "I don't give a Goddam what it is—
Mitchell,
Stans—anybody." If there were any doubt, the president insisted to Richardson: "You've got to believe I didn't know anything." Official Washington, however, was skeptical; Cox, they thought, would be ineffective; he was "too soft—not nasty enough."
James Doyle, a
Washington Star reporter who would later become the chief press advisor for Cox's group, described his own first reaction to meeting Cox: "Prosecutors are supposed to have the instincts of a shark; this one seemed more like a dolphin." That Cox was insufficiently attuned to the politics of his situation was on show when he invited to his swearing-in Senator
Ted Kennedy (the one Democrat whom Nixon loathed and feared) as well as Robert Kennedy's widow; had it take place in his old solicitor general's office; and had his old boss, President Roosevelt's Solicitor General Charles Fahy, administer the oath. It convinced Nixon that Cox saw his job as to bring down the president. Nixon now regarded him as a "partisan viper." Not long afterwards, Cox offended Senate Democrats as well by revealing at a press conference a letter requesting Senator Sam Ervin to cancel or at least postpone the Senate Watergate hearings so that he could familiarize himself with the proceedings. Ervin told the press: "Professor Cox's request is extraordinarily arrogant."
Staffing up After he was sworn in on May 25, 1973, Cox returned to Cambridge where he recruited two professors,
James Vorenberg and
Philip Heymann, to join his staff. The three arrived in Washington on May 29. Cox was faced with reports that the team of federal prosecutors under
Earl J. Silbert was about to resign unless given a vote of confidence. Cox appealed to their sense of professionalism without comment on how the case was handled. A bigger problem was Silbert's boss,
Henry E. Petersen, a career FBI/Justice Department employee appointed Assistant Attorney General by Nixon, who had regular meetings with Nixon, but would only provide vague descriptions to Cox, and point blank refused to turn over his memorandum of one such meeting, claiming executive privilege on behalf of Nixon. Cox concluded that a top priority was to hire a pre-eminent criminal trial attorney to supervise the prosecutors until the office was up and running and then try the cases after indictment. He persuaded
James F. Neal, the U.S. attorney who obtained the conviction of Jimmy Hoffa in 1964 for jury tampering, now in private practice, to come aboard for several weeks to stabilize the ship. Neal would stay to the end, at the end of each promised period promising only a few more weeks; he became Cox's number two man, picked to be the chief trial attorney. Vorenberg became number three and spent much of the early period recruiting lawyers. Vorenberg divided the mission into five task forces: the first to sign on was
Thomas F. McBride who would head up the task force on campaign contributions and would obtain the conviction of
George Steinbrenner;
William Merril would head up the
Plumbers task force;
Richard J. Davis would handle the task force investigating "dirty tricks;"
Joseph J. Connolly headed up the force investigating the ITT antitrust settlement; and James Neal headed the largest group, the Watergate task force, which dealt with the cover up and included
George Frampton,
Richard Ben-Veniste, and
Jill Wine Volner.
Henry S. Ruth became Cox's deputy and
Phil Lacovara became Cox's counsel. With a view toward establishing better relations with the press, Cox designated James Doyle his spokesman.
Joining issue The Special Prosecutor's office had to catch up with the federal prosecutors. The Senate Watergate committee was in competition for Dean's testimony, and leaks suggested they were about to get it. On June 3, published reports said that Dean would testify that he had spoken to the president about Watergate 35 times. On the next day the Deputy White House spokesman admitted that the two spoke frequently, but insisted that the discussions were in furtherance of the president's new determination to get to the bottom of the scandal. The spokesman admitted there were logs of all such conversations, but that they would not be turned over on the ground that they were covered by "executive privilege." Before Cox could litigate the issue of executive privilege and his entitlement to the documents, he had to fashion a reasonably specific subpoena that might be enforced in court. But he had no idea how the White House files were organized, so he scheduled a meeting with the president's counsel on June 6 to discuss his documents request. The president's new defense team was made up of one-time Democrat
Leonard Garment, University of Texas constitutional law professor
Charles Alan Wright, and Nixon true believer
J. Fred Buzhardt. Cox made three requests: the Petersen document concerning his meeting with Nixon; Petersen's memorandum to Haldeman summarizing the same meeting; and the tape of the conversation between Nixon and Dean mentioned by Petersen from the same meeting. Vorenberg added a request for all logs between the president and key aides from June 1972 to May 1973. Buzhardt said that only the president could determine what he would produce. Garment and Wright argued about executive privilege, which Wright said applied not only to presidential documents but ones of his aides such as Haldeman and Ehrlichman. As for the tape of the April 15 Dean meeting, Buzhardt (falsely) suggested it was not a tape
of the meeting but rather the president's later dictated tape
about the meeting. No resolution was arrived at, but the president's lawyers did not reject the requests outright. The president's legal team employed an approach that would become familiar: state an overly broad position, equivocate, delay, and then abruptly make partial concessions in the face of perceived popular disapproval. Shortly after their meeting, Cox announced a sudden press conference (unrelated to the discovery dispute). Buzhardt, thinking that Cox planned to go public with the dispute over the documents, called Vorenberg. Instead of discussing the press conference Vorenberg reminded Buzhardt of the documents requests. Buzhardt assured Vorenberg that a package would soon be delivered. Twenty minutes before the press conference, the package arrived containing the logs of presidential meetings and telephone conferences with key aides, including Dean, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman. The press conference took place and involved (as was originally planned) only an introduction to several new attorneys. The documents, however, together with the logs of Haldeman and Ehrlichman themselves proved essential to draft subpoenas sufficiently specific to elicit documents, and more crucially when their existence would later become known, the tapes. By mid-June the office was fully functioning. Silbert's U.S. attorney's team was finally eased out on June 29, much to the chagrin of the federal prosecutors. The task force that was to show the first results was McBridge's campaign finance group. On July 6, American Airlines admitted that it made an illegal $55,000 campaign contribution to Nixon's personal lawyer
Herb Kalmbach. Within two months the Special Prosecutor would uncover illegal contributions by Ashland Oil, Gulf Oil, Goodyear Tire and Rubber, Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing, Phillips Petroleum, and Braniff Airlines. While the center of media attention was on the cover up, by January, according to a Harris survey, 81% of Americans believed "illegal corporate money-givers" were "harmful to the country."
White House tapes Herb Kalmbach, especially of interest to the illegal campaign contributions task force, was scheduled to testify before the Senate Watergate Committee on July 16. Instead, Haldeman's aide Col.
Alexander Butterfield was inserted as a "mystery witness." During his 30-minute testimony he revealed the secret taping system that was installed in the Oval Office, the president's office at the Executive Office Building, and at Camp David)—a voice-activated mechanism designed to capture everything spoken by or to the president. The existence of the tapes was the biggest piece of evidence unearthed by the Senate Watergate Committee; around it much of the remainder of the
cover-up case would revolve. The materiality of certain tapes was self-evident. Tapes of conversations testified to by John Dean would either show that Dean's account was accurate, in which case the president was complicit in obstruction of justice, or false, in which case Dean committed perjury in his testimony to the Senate. The relevance of other tapes could be inferred from the proximity of meetings to Watergate-related events. Cox believed he could maximize his chance for a favorable ruling by limiting the scope of his initial request to material arguably important to the criminal proceedings. Once he obtained a ruling that executive privilege gave way to a compelling need in a criminal prosecution, he could ask for additional material later. So on July 18 Cox sent Buzhardt a written request for eight specific tapes. On July 23, Wright responded in writing denying the request on grounds of executive privilege and separation of powers. That evening Cox had a grand jury subpoena demanding the eight tapes and three other items served on Buzhardt who accepted on behalf of the president. On July 26, Chief Judge
John J. Sirica received a letter from Nixon himself responding to the subpoena in which he asserted that it would be as inappropriate for the court to compel him as it would for him to compel the court. He was therefore not producing the tapes. But he included a copy of the March 30 memo concerning Hunt's employment and promised to make available the Strachan political documents concerning ambassadorships. Within an hour Cox was before the grand jury, explaining the response to them; they voted to request Sirica to issue an order to Nixon to show cause why there should not be prompt compliance with the subpoena. Sirica had the members individually polled and issued the order. Sirica allowed the parties a month to brief the issue, which came for a hearing on August 22. Wright took a broad, absolutist position claiming the president was the only person who could decide what materials to turn over to them. He relayed Nixon's feelings on national security, saying that Nixon told him that one tape had "national security information so highly sensitive that he did not feel free to hint to me what the nature of it is" despite Wright's full national security clearance. Wright said that the president's power was so inclusive that he could terminate the Special Prosecutor's office and have all the cases dismissed. Cox, on his turn, emphasized the peculiar situation here where there "is strong reason to believe the integrity of the executive office has been corrupted" and pointed out that the president had permitted his staff to testify about the meetings covered by the tapes but refused to turn over the tapes themselves, which would be the better evidence of what transpired. As for the claim that the president could terminate his commission, Cox said (presciently in hindsight) that even if were true, then the president would have to accept the political repercussions that would follow exercising that power. After questioning Wright for about 17 minutes (and Cox only 8), the judge said he hoped to have a decision within a week. On August 29, the court ordered the president to deliver all the material to him for review. The decision amounted to a rejection of Wright's absolutist argument. Although not a complete victory for Cox, Sirica ignored the national security argument, and the decision was widely considered as historic—the first time a court ordered a president to produce evidence since Chief Justice
John Marshall in 1807 ordered President
Thomas Jefferson to produce documents. The White House quickly announced that Nixon "will not comply with the order." Wright said that they were considering an appeal, but the statement "hinted that they might find some other method of sustaining the president's legal position." The president did appeal, but to the public irritation of Wright, the Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the proceedings expedited, scheduling argument for the following week before the entire circuit. At the argument on September 11 Wright again took the maximum view of executive privilege. In response to a question by Chief Judge
David L. Bazelon, Wright said that he could think of no circumstance that the tapes could be demanded by courts. He said, however, that the White House had made information available, waiving the privilege, but tapes constituted "the raw material of life," something essentially privileged. Wright maintained that the privilege survived even if abused, such as by the president engaging in fraud or other crime. Cox's approach, just as in the sit-in and reapportionment cases, was to avoid asserting a broad legal principle and instead show how the case was
sui generis, unlikely to establish a precedent soon relied on, and one that fit easily within existing principles of administration of justice. Observers believed Cox had won. Instead, the Court's decision two days later (even before the time the court had provided for post-argument briefs
Negotiations, grand jury progress, and the court's decision The Circuit Court's recommendation was that the parties come to an arrangement whereby the president would submit portions of the tapes to Cox and Wright who would decide with Nixon what portions would be submitted to the grand jury. Cox announced almost immediately that he was willing to discuss the matter with the White House lawyers. The White House would only say that it was studying the matter; Wright had already returned to Texas. The Court instructed the parties to report back within one week. If no arrangement could be made, it would decide the appeal. was an utter defeat for the president, and the papers highlighted the statement that the president was not "above the law's commands." The court modified Judge Sirica's order and required Nixon's lawyers to specify the grounds of any privilege they were claiming as to particular portions of the tape, and Cox was to be furnished with the specifications. Cox was also to be given access to the material in any instance when the Court was in doubt of the relevance to the criminal proceedings. In this case, the court said, "any concern over confidentiality is minimized by the attorney general's designation of a distinguished and reflective counsel as Special Prosecutor." In short, the court required disclosure except for portions that the president could articulate a particularized need for confidentiality, and Cox was permitted to see any portion where Sirica needed guidance on relevance.
White House ultimatum Unlike its actions following the Sirica decision, the White House remained quiet that Friday night and through the weekend following the Court of Appeals ruling. Cox had no response until he met Richardson at 6:00 p.m. on Monday, October 15. Cox thought this meeting would be a continuation of the "Byzantine" conversation (as Cox called it) from the previous Friday, but instead Richardson appeared now to be the point man on negotiations over the tapes. Richardson gave an outline of a proposal to have Senator
John Stennis authenticate transcripts of relevant portions of the tapes. Cox was able to infer that Richardson had gotten orders from the White House and was concerned that if a compromise was not reached one or both would be fired. During the 75-minute meeting, Cox asked a long list of questions, including where he would stand with respect to future demands for documents, tapes, or other material. Because he had an engagement, Richardson proposed they meet again in the morning. The next day Richardson told Cox that if they did not have an agreement by Friday "the consequences will be very serious for both of us." Cox objected to the deadline, suggesting that if their talks continue they could easily get a postponement of any response due the court. Richardson could not explain why there was a deadline and instead wanted to go over the points they had agreed upon, then discuss other issues; but Cox insisted that it was an inefficient way to proceed and gave him his earlier 6-page proposal; and Richardson agreed to write a counter-proposal. , photo portrait during the Nixon administration Cox did not hear from Richardson the rest of Tuesday or Wednesday. There was much disagreement in the Special Prosecutor's office whether Cox should accept the proposal at all. Much of the concern had to do with Senator Stennis, a Nixon supporter, but more importantly a frail, partially deaf 72-year-old who only recently had recovered from a near fatal gunshot wound in a mugging in January. Cox was worried that rejecting a deal would risk obtaining anything from the White House. James Neal cautioned that if he rejected a compromise a large part of the country might accuse him of acting like a "super-president" without any checks. Doyle had the opposite concern: if Cox accepted less than the tapes, which the court ordered turned over, he might be seen as part of the cover-up. James Neal had a suggestion to minimize the Stennis problem—have him appointed by the court as one of several special masters. In that way he could obtain assistance in a publicly regulated manner. In the midst of the internal debate word came in the afternoon of Wednesday, October 17, that Judge Sirica dismissed the suit of the Senate Watergate Committee against Nixon seeking the tapes. Sirica ruled that the court lacked subject matter jurisdiction. It left the Special Prosecutor as the only means by which the tapes could be made public. Pressure on Cox to seek the material increased, while the White House was left with only one avenue to block it and so had added incentive to pressure Richardson to get Cox either to compromise or resign. At 5:00 p.m. Richardson hand-delivered to Cox a draft entitled "A Proposal", which contained the Buzhardt comments. He called Cox at 6:00 for his comments. Cox replied: "I think I should respond in writing, Elliot." That night James Neal and Dean's lawyer worked past midnight finalizing John Dean's plea agreement. At about 2:30 a.m. Neal had the lawyer review with Dean the agreement, including the provision that if any testimony he had already given proved materially false, he could be prosecuted for perjury. Neal said that when Dean agreed to the plea deal containing that proviso, he knew that Dean's version of the events was truthful and he also realized that "Archibald Cox was in serious trouble with the president." On Thursday, October 18, Cox drafted an 11-point reply to Richardson. Cox assured Richardson that he was "not unamenable" to a solution in which he had no direct access to the tapes. But he felt that it was unfair to depend on one individual to be responsible for verification, so he proposed Neal's idea of three "Special Masters" whose identities were disclosed from the start. He commented on the method for determining what portions would be transcribed and suggested that the tapes be subject to analysis for tampering. The comments went by messenger at mid-afternoon. Richardson around 6 p.m. brought it to the White House, where Wright had just returned from Texas (to finalize the appeal papers to the Supreme Court that were due the following day), and although he had just reviewed the "Stennis proposal," he was enthusiastically extolling its reasonableness and holding forth on how the president could convince the American people that it was the solution to the crisis. When shown the Cox counter-proposal, he was outraged that Cox had "rejected" the president's offer. Wright counseled rejection of Cox's counteroffer since he believed the president had a "50–50 chance" in the Supreme Court to win outright. Richardson, perplexed at the opposition to negotiating with Cox, suggested to Wright: "Charlie, why don't you call Archie and see if you can sell it to him." That night Wright called Cox and was routed to the phone in Cox's brother's home in Virginia, where Cox was having dinner and playing with his brother's children. Wright gave Cox an ultimatum with four points, the most important of which was that Cox would be given no more tapes beyond the nine that were being transcribed (a condition not in the Stennis proposal). Cox asked that Wright send the points to him in writing so that he could consider them the next day and assured him that he was not rejecting the points outright. At 8:30 a.m. on Friday October 19, the day of Nixon's deadline for appealing to the Supreme Court (otherwise the Court of Appeals decision would become final), Cox received a letter from Wright dated the previous night. It purported to confirm Cox's "rejection" of Richardson's "very reasonable proposal." There was no mention of the four conditions. He wrote that he would telephone at 10:00 a.m. to find out if there was any reason to continue talking. Cox, who until then had publicly and privately spoken of the integrity of Wright, told his colleagues: "very clever lies." Cox wrote a note to Wright saying that the proposal needed "fleshing out," particularly in light of the conditions Wright had set out in the phone call the previous night, which Cox put in writing for the record. He, Neal, and others then left for Sirica's courtroom to attend the plea hearing on John Dean. The White House, seeing only that a hearing had been scheduled, panicked, not knowing what was to take place; no attorney was present when Ruth and Lacovara arrived to deliver the letter and they left it with the guard. Haig quickly learned of the letter, told Richardson that Cox "rejected" the deal, and summoned him to the White House. To Richardson's surprise, Haig said that it was no longer necessary to fire Cox because the president had gotten bipartisan approval for the deal, there were meetings with the two leading members of the Senate Watergate Committee scheduled, and the plan would be acceptable to both the American people and the courts. The guilty plea by John Dean (with obligation to cooperate) that morning represented the most significant step so far in the prosecutions. Yet, when Cox returned to the office it remained quiet—Wright had neither called nor responded in writing. When the courts closed, there was still no sign that the president had filed a notice to appeal to the Supreme Court. At 5:23 p.m. a letter from Wright arrived, which simply again maintained the reasonableness of the original proposal. Wright closed with a statement of regret that Cox would not agree. Cox now realized that he and Richardson had been allowed to negotiate even though the president had no intention to go beyond the inadequate first proposal. On this conclusion, the lawyers in the office began copying their most important memos for safe keeping. At 7:20 Richardson phoned Cox at home and read him a letter he just received from Wright informing him the Stennis plan had been agreed to by the leadership of the Senate Watergate Committee and that Cox would be instructed to not pursue any further presidential material. A statement was to be released that night. Cox and Doyle hurried back to the office. When they obtained the statement they saw it as an attempt to sell the unilateral proposal; it claimed that the plan had the approval of Senators Sam Ervin and
Howard Baker, who, the statement falsely said, were the ones who proposed Senator Stennis. Although Cox had refused to agree, Nixon planned to take the proposal to Sirica and instructed his lawyers not to seek Supreme Court review. Given that the statement was riddled with falsehoods, Cox that night dictated a press release to Doyle (the staff had gone off for the three-day weekend), and Doyle phoned it in to the wire services, also announcing there would be a press conference on Saturday, at 1:00 p.m.
Saturday Night Massacre Doyle was able to use his press contacts to secure the ballroom of the
National Press Club for the 1:00 p.m. press conference on Saturday, October 20. It was to be broadcast live on NBC and CBS and a summary would be shown during half-time of the football game being shown on ABC. Cox that morning was quite concerned about whether he would be able to take the president on alone. He was well aware that he had no institutional support, and the apparent defection of Sam Ervin of the Senate Watergate Committee profoundly troubled him. "Spineless!" he remarked on reading of it. He was also concerned about lack of political support. Just six days before Senator
George McGovern had told the
ACLU, which had just taken out newspaper ads calling for Nixon's impeachment, that there was not yet support for it; in fact, there was not even enough strength in the opposition to override vetoes. As for Nixon's statement itself, influential members seemed behind it: Republican Senate minority leader
Hugh Scott called it a "very wise solution." Democratic Speaker
Carl Albert characterized it, noncommitally, as "interesting." Even Senate majority leader
Mike Mansfield said it was a way "to avoid a constitutional confrontation." When Joseph Connolly called an aide to liberal Republican Senator
Richard Schweiker, he was told that the senator "can't get out front on this." At the office, the lawyer staff assembled to discuss the matter as a group for the first time. Philip Heymann had flown in from Cambridge to lend support. They offered contradictory advice, and Cox asked them to go to their offices to write up suggestions for him. At 11:00 a.m. he met them again and gave something of a valedictory and urged them to continue working if he were fired. At 12:30, Cox, Phyllis, James Doyle, and John Barker walked to the National Press Club. "He was plenty upset," said Barker. Richardson was on the phone when Cox arrived and read to him the text of a letter he had sent to the president that day in which he said that Nixon's instructions gave him "serious difficulties" and outlined several steps that still might save the compromise. Phyllis, holding his hand, walked him to the stage, where they were photographed. Cox then sat down at the table and began his impromptu remarks. Heymann thought he started out nervous, defensively saying that he was "not out to get the president …" Once he got into the details of the history and significance of the dispute over the tapes, which involved a patient explanation of criminal procedure, evidence, administrative and constitutional law, he relaxed. Doyle said: "He was folksy, unpretentious, disarming. He seemed the country lawyer, talking good sense." While he used simple terms and short sentences, he was not patronizing or supercilious. "He offered a masterful professorial performance, designed to explain the legal and constitutional confrontation in terms that struck at the core of the layman's treasured values essential to the American system." He defended established institutions and regular procedure. By contrast, the president's proposal involved deciding that a "court order would not be obeyed." In the place of evidence, which Cox sought, the president proposed providing "summaries" while the genuine, irrefutable evidence, the tapes of what actually transpired, would be available to only two or three men, "all but one of them the aides to the president and men who have been associated with those who are the subject of the investigation." In describing the course of the negotiations for all information, he showed how the White House lawyers had stalled from the beginning. But he never attacked anyone, at one point taking Buzhardt off the hook: "he has behaved in dealing with me in an entirely honorable way —except that he's too damn slow." With the questions that followed, Cox spent more than an hour, at the end of which his staff handed out copies of the various proposals and correspondence that took place during the week. It was so persuasive a performance that
Sarah McClendon, White House correspondent known for her sharp questions, approached Cox and said: "I want to shake your hand, you are a great American." Doyle wrote that it was "the most unusual press conference I have ever attended. The hard-bitten, cynical press corps was rooting for Archibald Cox." John Douglas said: "It was one of the most spectacular performances, one of two or three press conference ever held in this country which have had a significant effect on public opinion." The press conference also unravelled the Nixon-Haig plan. Cox did not resign, nor was he cowed by the president's directive. Moreover, instead of exploiting Richardson's reputation for integrity to his own advantage (a key feature on which the plan was based), the president was forced to act in his own name, and Cox was able to draw Richardson to his side by defending him as honorable. So the White House decided to fire Cox. It was unable, however, to make either Richardson or his deputy
William Ruckelshaus carry out the order. Each resigned in turn rather than fire Cox, although the White House later claimed it fired Ruckelshaus. Solicitor General
Robert Bork (third in line at the Justice Department) in a face-to-face meeting with the president agreed to issue the order as the acting attorney general and he also decided not to resign after so doing. As for the termination itself, Bork sent a written order to Cox by messenger that evening to Cox's home. The White House then fatally overplayed its hand. At 8:25 p.m. press secretary
Ron Ziegler announced what would become known as the "
Saturday Night Massacre." He explained that Cox had been fired, but added, somewhat gratuitously (and, as it would ultimately transpire, inaccurately), "the office of the Special Prosecution Force has been abolished as of approximately 8 P.M. tonight." Haig compounded the bad publicity by publicly sealing the offices of the Special Prosecutor as well as those of Richardson and Ruckelshaus. He explained his conduct by saying: "You would turn the country into a banana republic if you allowed defiance of the president." To Judge Sirica, who watched it on television, it was the cordoning off of the Special Prosecutor's offices that looked like part of a Latin American coup. Fred Emery wrote for the
Times of London that there was "a whiff of the Gestapo in the chill October air." FBI agents showed up at the Special Prosecutor's offices at 9:00 p.m. and briefly prevented deputy prosecutor Henry Ruth from entering. Staffers inside were told they were not permitted to remove any documents, official or personal. At a hastily arranged press conference in the library of the building, Ruth and Doyle explained that they had taken copies of major memos to a safe place the night before, but that they were concerned about the vast amount of material still in the office that had not been presented to the grand jury. Doyle read Cox's statement on his termination: "Whether we shall continue to be a Government of laws and not of men is now for Congress and ultimately the American people." amid mounting tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union over possible armed conflict in the Middle East. The actions of Nixon and his aides that night produced "results precisely the opposite to what the president and his lawyers had anticipated." Instead of simply removing Cox, "they raised a 'firestorm' of protest that permanently scarred Nixon's credibility with the public, and, most damagingly, with Congressional Republicans and Southern Democrats." Public reaction, even though it was a holiday weekend, was swift and overwhelming. About 450,000 telegrams and cables reached the White House and Congress. Mail and wires were put in bundles then sorted by state. The deluge eclipsed any previous record. Outside the White House, marchers held signs saying "Honk for Impeachment"; car horns were heard in downtown Washington day and night for two weeks. But more concerning to the White House must have been the political reaction. On Sunday
John B. Anderson, Chairman of the
House Republican Conference, predicted that "impeachment resolutions are going to be raining down like hailstorms."
George H. W. Bush, then Chairman of the
Republican National Committee, was so concerned over the electoral consequences that he visited the White House, hoping to persuade the president to rehire Richardson for damage control, perhaps as ambassador to the U.S.S.R. On Tuesday, Speaker
Carl Albert began referring impeachment resolutions to the House Judiciary Committee with the consent of Gerald Ford. Nixon lawyer Leonard Garment said that the White House was paralyzed. "[H]e thought of little else except to marvel 'over the mischief we had wrought and the public relations disaster we had brought on ourselves.'" In the end, Nixon did not even achieve the short-term tactical benefit the maneuver was designed to afford him. On Tuesday afternoon eleven lawyers from the Special Prosecutor's force convened with Wright and Buzhardt in the courtroom of Judge Sirica, for further proceedings on the subpoenas. That weekend Sirica drafted an order to show cause why Nixon should not be held in contempt. He was thinking of a $25,000 to $50,000 a day fine until the president complied. To everyone's amazement, Wright announced that the president was prepared to produce all the material ordered. Not long afterward,
Leon Jaworski would be appointed Special Prosecutor and, because of Nixon's wounded public standing, was given even more independence than Cox had. Cox would not be part of any of it, however, for after a brief farewell meeting with his staff (whom Jaworski would keep), advising them how important it was that they continue and assuring them of Jaworski's good faith, he and Phyllis drove off in their pickup truck to their place in
Brooksville, Maine. Cox's colleague and friend
Philip Heymann described the effect of that weekend from Cox's address, through the massacre and the reaction: Cox's case on the tapes did not go to the Supreme Court, but when the president tried to resist a later subpoena by Jaworski, the case made its way to the Court. On July 24, 1974, only three days after oral argument, United States Supreme Court voted by 8 to 0 to reject Nixon's claims of
executive privilege and enforced the subpoena requiring the release of the tapes. Fifteen days later Nixon announced his decision to resign as president effective the next day, August 8, 1974. Many legal experts outside of the United States were shocked at how legal process, particularly one issued at the request of a subordinate official, could require the head of state to do anything. Cox wrote of one scholar who said: "It is
unthinkable that the courts of any country should issue an order to its Chief of State." Cox spent much of the rest of his career writing on the unique place of the Court in the American system of government. As for this particular case, when it was all over,
Times legal correspondent Anthony Lewis gave chief credit for the extraordinary result to Cox: ==After Watergate==