Speaking Truth to Power in a TIme of Crisis

Can you make a difference with a law degree?

It was 1973, and the nation was in crisis. After agents of the Committee to Re-Elect the President were arrested for attempting to burglarize the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Hotel, Independent Prosecutor Archibald Cox issued a subpoena to President Richard Nixon, asking for copies of taped conversations recorded in the Oval Office and authorized by Nixon as evidence.

President Nixon acted to dismiss Cox from his office the next night, a Saturday, October 20th. He contacted Attorney General Elliott Richardson and ordered him to fire the special prosecutor. Richardson refused, and instead resigned in protest. Nixon then ordered Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox. He also refused and resigned in protest. Nixon then contacted the Solicitor General, Robert Bork, and ordered him as acting head of the Justice Department to fire Cox, and Bork complied

The nation was stunned by this series of events, which became known as the Saturday Night Massacre. In the Republican leadership, however, the immediate impulse was to "circle the wagons" around the President. Nixon's wall of protection first began to crumble when U.S. Senator Edward Brooke, a former Massachusetts Attorney General and author of the federal Fair Housing Act, privately became the first Republican Senator to call for the President's resignation, advising Nixon that he had lost the confidence of the American people.