Richard Nixon Stumbles to the Brink

"Whether ours shall continue to be a government of laws and not of men is now for Congress and ultimately the American people to decide."

Archibald Cox (on being fired)

With astonishing speed in a frantic Washington weekend, an effort by President Nixon to compromise in the battle for his tapes and to preserve the authority of his office crashed toward a fateful climax, leaving his survival in the Oval Office in grave doubt and pitching the nation into one of the gravest constitutional crises in its history. There were these stunning developments in rapid sequence:

> Nixon revealed that he would refuse to comply with an appeals-court order directing him to yield his controversial tapes and documents to Federal Judge John J. Sirica for in camera inspection. Nor would he carry his case to the Supreme Court. Instead, he proposed to make available summaries of relevant portions of the tapes. These would first be authenticated by Senator John C. Stennis, whom he would let hear the tapes in their entirety.

> Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox held a televised news conference to object to this Nixon "compromise" on the tapes and to declare that he would ask the courts either to cite Nixon for contempt or to clarify why the President's out-of-court offer was unacceptable.

> Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson, who under heavy Senate pressure had appointed Cox and given him a free hand to investigate all Watergate-related crimes, to fire Cox. Richardson refused and resigned on principle.

> Nixon ordered Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to dismiss Cox. Ruckelshaus also in conscience declined. So Nixon fired him.

> Nixon then appointed Solicitor General Robert Bork acting Attorney General and directed him to fire Cox and abolish Cox's entire operation, including his staff of more than 60 attorneys, who have been investigating the pervasive scandal for five months. Bork obeyed, and within hours the nation witnessed the spectacle of FBI agents sealing off the offices and papers of the two top Justice Department men as well as those of Cox and his aides.

In these historic events, the President was acting in direct defiance of a court order. By abolishing the independent arm of the Justice Department that was created at the insistence of the Senate, Nixon was challenging the Congress that holds the power to impeach and try him for violating his oath of office.

In just a few dizzying hours, a plan that Nixon had presented as a means of preventing a constitutional crisis had actually speeded a dual confrontation between the Executive and both other branches of Government. The question was how the public and Congress would perceive the President's actions and how much pressure would arise for the House of Representatives to begin impeachment proceedings against him.