Michael Peregrine
No, it’s not the title of Jamie Lee Curtis’ new movie. Nor does it suggest an Al Capone resurrection. And it doesn’t describe the latest meeting of the House Republican Conference, either.
Rather, the Saturday Night Massacre refers to the extraordinary clash between the commitment to democratic principles, and the outer limits of presidential power, that created the most memorable constitutional crisis of the Watergate era. And it carries exceptional relevance for today’s political climate.
The defining moment of the “massacre” was the combination of three events, all occurring during the afternoon and evening of Oct. 20, 1973, at the height of the Watergate crisis (and at the apex of the Yom Kippur War).
The first two events were the decisions of Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his deputy, William Ruckelshaus, to resign from office rather than carry out President Richard Nixon’s order to dismiss Archibald Cox, the Department of Justice’s Watergate special prosecutor. The third was the actual dismissal of Cox and termination of his office, carried out by U.S. Solicitor General Robert Bork.
The precipitating event to the massacre was the testimony before the Senate Watergate Committee of a former Nixon White House aide revealing the presence of an audio taping system in the Oval Office. The possibility thus arose that conversations between Nixon and his suspected accomplices might actually be preserved on tape.
Prior to the disclosure, Senate investigators and the special prosecutor were relying primarily on the testimony of another aide, John Dean, to establish proof of the many illegalities alleged against the president and his key advisers. Following the disclosure, the existence of the tapes was viewed as a potential “blockbuster” — incontrovertible evidence of White House crimes. But as events began to play out, it seemed that existence of the tapes was one thing; obtaining them from the White House was entirely another.
Nixon was adamantly opposed to releasing the tapes. He refused to comply with subpoenas from Richardson and the special prosecutor to make them available, citing executive privilege. In addition, Nixon was deeply concerned with the aggressiveness of the special prosecutor, believing that the president had the authority to fire not only the attorney general but also Cox, because they were both administrative employees subordinate to the executive branch.
A subsequent decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals rejected Nixon’s claims of absolute privilege and ordered him to deliver the tapes. “Though the President is elected by nationwide ballot and is often said to represent all the people, he does not embody the nation’s sovereignty. He is not above the law’s commands,” the court ruled. Yet the needle remained unmoved.
Pressured to comply with the court order, Nixon continued to resist delivering the tapes. He insisted on an alternative to full delivery of the tapes to preserve what he perceived as the power of the presidency. This led to a series of negotiations during the week of Oct. 14 among the White House, the attorney general and the special prosecutor to reach a compromise by which the tapes, or a summary thereof, could be made available.
Crunch time came Saturday, Oct. 20, when Cox refused to accept the White House’s proposed compromise, and the dominoes began to fall during the afternoon and evening.
Upon learning of Cox’s position, Nixon ordered Richardson to fire the special prosecutor, principally for exceeding his authority. Richardson refused to comply with the order and immediately resigned. His automatic successor, Ruckelshaus, similarly refused to comply with the president’s order and also resigned. Bork, as next in line, was more comfortable complying with the order and fired Cox that evening.
Richardson’s decision was made all the more consequential given Nixon’s alleged claim that the attorney general’s action was undermining presidential authority during a national crisis — the critical state of the Yom Kippur War. Richardson reportedly responded, “I’m acting on the basis of national interest as I see it — there should be no mistaken impression.”
The Saturday Night Massacre proved to be a significant milestone in the Watergate crisis, turning public opinion sharply against Nixon, leading to the appointment of a new special prosecutor and ultimately accelerating the process that led to his resignation on Aug. 8, 1974.
But as consequential as it was, we should not view the relevance of the massacre solely from that historical perspective. The overarching events, combined with the civic courage demonstrated by Cox, Richardson and Ruckelshaus, provide several valuable reference points to current events.
The first relates to the critical constitutional questions associated with the scope of presidential power. Nixon was, in essence, advocating that the office carries with it a virtually absolute presidential privilege, which could extend to true immunity from prosecution. While this claim has never been fully tested before the Supreme Court, it is being raised again by former President Donald Trump in his defense of criminal charges arising from the Jan. 6 insurrection.
The second reference is more subtle and hints at the types of pressures that may subsequently confront attorneys general and other federal justice and law enforcement officials in future presidential administrations. These include presidential orders that conflict with what those officials view as the national interest and the rule of law, such as extracting retribution from those perceived as presidential enemies, dropping existing criminal litigation previously filed against the new president and granting pardons to those convicted in connection with Jan. 6.
How will future attorneys general respond to such pressures? Like Richardson and Ruckelshaus? Or like Bork?
To paraphrase the storied journalist Anthony Lewis, extreme assertions of presidential power ultimately become a test of the principle that rulers in a democracy, like those ruled, are subject to the law. That’s the ultimate and lasting lesson from the Saturday Night Massacre.
Michael Peregrine is a Chicago attorney. In 1972, he was a volunteer for the Committee to Re-Elect the President, a fundraising organization for Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign.
