Meredith Medoway Watergate: A Constitutional Crisis Saturday Night Massacre Reflection I think that the Saturday Night Massacre

showed the real crack that was hurriedly making its way through the Nixon Administration. The truth was beginning to show and Nixon could feel the pressure. From all that Ive read and learned about Nixon this semester, this incident does not come as a surprise. In fact, it comes almost naturally in the unwinding story of the Watergate scandal. Archibald Cox was hired as a special prosecutor by Attorney General Elliot Richardson to investigate the Watergate break-in. Cox asked for the Nixon tapes and was denied. He also didnt approve of receiving only summarized tapes. His resistance to comply with what Nixon wanted led to his firing. After reading the Kutler section in our textbook, I looked at some of the Washington Post articles that came out right after the massacre took place on October 20, 1973. An article, Cox Firing Sparks a Million Messages, Mostly Anti-Nixon, came out on November 14, 1973. There were a number of things that I found interesting in this article. First, by the time the article came out, October 20th was already known as the Saturday Night Massacre. The naming of the event so early represents how the public responded to the incident. They immediately found it to be atrocious. Next, it was crazy to see the firestorm reaction in the country. The article says that Coxs dismissal led to a million or more Americans giving there opinion through the mail or telegraph wires. Furthermore, in the 24 days since his dismissal, Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his deputy William Ruckelshaus quit in protest and over 400,000 public opinion telegrams arrived at Capitol

Hill offices, White House, and various prosecutorial agencies. The pro-impeachment ratio of these letters and telegrams was about 10:1. On the other hand, there were a couple of Nixon defenses. I was interested to see new Vice Presidents Fords quick defense of Nixon. He wanted the public to recognize and focus on the more important things that Nixon has done. I guess Ford didnt really have much of a choice, but I wonder if he knew at the time what he was supporting. He did end up pardoning Nixon so maybe he did have some kind of respect for him. Did Ford ever give any kind of speech or write anything later in life that gave his opinion on the Nixon Administration? The article also mentioned that there was a slight upswing for Nixon support a few weeks after the incident after giving a postscript of Watergate. I wonder what he said in that postscript to convince the public that he was still a good guy. Another article that I found, titled Nixon Seen Deeply Suspicious of Cox, was surprisingly straightforward. I was struck by how the author just went right ahead and said that Nixon fired Cox because he was worried about the investigation getting closer to the White House. He attacks a few issues, including the $100,000 from Howard Hughes. I was impressed with Jack Andersons specific report and wondered if he got his information in a similar way to Woodward and Bernstein and if he maybe used some of their sources. I agree with some of the reactions to the Constitutional aspects of the massacre. For example, I believe that Nixon was acting like a King and abusing his Presidential power. The President cannot fire anyone who disagrees with or doesnt support him. That would lead to quite the corrupt government (that Nixon ran for a while).