GateHouse Media
November 29, 2019
William D. Ruckelshaus died this week. In 2015, President
Barack Obama presented Ruckelshaus with the nation’s highest civilian honor -
the Medal of Freedom.
Ruckelshaus was recognized for his dedicated service in
fighting pollution and serving as the first leader of the Environmental
Protection Agency. Tucked away in the White House statement announcing his
award was the following passage, “During the Watergate crisis, Ruckelshaus and
Attorney General Elliot Richardson chose to resign rather than fire the
Watergate special prosecutor. Their principled stance was a pivotal moment for
the Justice Department and galvanized public opinion for upholding the rule of
law.”
In 1972, five men hired by the committee to re-elect
President Richard Nixon broke into the Democratic National Committee
headquarters in the Watergate Building in Washington D.C.
About a year later, Archibald Cox was appointed to
investigate the matter.
Cox demanded that the White House turn over 10 hours of
secret Oval Office recordings, some of which could implicate the president in
covering-up the break-in.
Later that year, Nixon, feeling the investigation closing in
on him, demanded the Department of Justice fire Cox for refusing to obey the
president’s order to abandon his demand for the “White House tapes.”
Attorney General Elliot Richardson resigned rather than
dismiss Cox. Nixon then turned to Ruckelshaus, his Deputy Attorney General, to
fire Cox. Ruckelshaus chose to resign as well. The incident became known as the
“Saturday Night Massacre.”
Robert Bork, the solicitor general, became acting attorney
general and fired Cox. Within minutes, the White House sent the FBI to seal the
offices of the Special Prosecutor, Attorney General and Deputy Attorney
General.
Under enormous public pressure, Nixon appointed a new
special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski. He eventually obtained the missing tapes and
Nixon resigned the following year.
Ruckelshaus is certainly not a household name, but he was a
true American hero. He told The New York Times years later, “I thought what the
president was doing was fundamentally wrong - I was convinced that Cox had only
been doing what he had the authority to do; what was really of concern to the
president and the White House was that he was too close. He hadn’t engaged in
any extraordinary improprieties, quite the contrary.”
Ruckelshaus took a principled stand and was willing to put
it all on the line for what he believed in - the rule of law. The conduct of
our current president reveals just how few American heroes we have today.
Ruckelshaus displayed, as Ernest Hemingway coined it, “grace
under fire.”
In his letter of resignation, reprinted at the time by The
New York Times, Ruckelshaus politely thanked President Nixon for the
opportunity to serve and wished him well, but admonished that “my conscious
will not permit me to carry out your instructions to discharge Archibald Cox.
My disagreement with that action at this time is too fundamental to permit me
to act otherwise.”
Compare Ruckelshaus’ statement with that of recently fired
Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer, who lashed out at President Donald Trump
writing in the Washington Post, ”(T)he president has very little understanding
of what it means to be in the military, to fight ethically or to be governed by
a uniform set of rules and practices.”
In 2018, Ruckelshaus wrote in the Washington Post, the
“Saturday Night Massacre” was not only the beginning of the end for Nixon, “but
it also accelerated the growing wave of political cynicism and distrust in our
government we are still living with today. One manifestation of that legacy: a
president who will never admit he uttered a falsehood and a Congress too often
pursuing only a partisan version of the truth.”
Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett,
Kelly & George P.C. His book “The Executioner’s Toll, 2010” was released by
McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com
and follow him on Twitter at @MatthewTMangino.
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