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OCTOBER 19

TODAY IS THE LAST DAY on which the President can appeal the Court of Appeals ruling that he must comply with Judge Sirica’s order to give the subpoenaed tapes to the court. The assumption is that he will appeal. The President might gamble that the Supreme Court would not hand down a “definitive” judgment. Moreover, there are a number of ways in which the issue of the tapes could sputter along for a considerable time, with compromises, challenges over the meaning of “national security,” and so on. The matter could end ambiguously. This morning’s Washington Post reports that Attorney General Richardson and Special Prosecutor Cox have been meeting during the week in an effort to avoid a Supreme Court showdown over the tapes.

Most of today’s stories are about the Middle East. Israeli tanks are on the west bank of the Suez. Saudi Arabia has announced that it has cut its oil production by ten percent, and has threatened to cut off all supplies of oil to the United States unless the United States ceases its military aid to Israel.

There are further stories about the President’s problems. In Washington, Egil Krogh has pleaded not guilty to charges that he lied to the grand jury about the plumbers’ raid of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s file. Krogh contends that in ordering the break-in he was acting as “an officer of the United States” in defense of national security.

In his opening speech at the biennial A.F.L.-C.I.O. convention today, George Meany said, “Never in history has a great nation been governed so corruptly.”

Gerald Warren told White House reporters yesterday that the hundred thousand dollars given by Howard Hughes to Bebe Rebozo was a “potential campaign contribution.” Warren would not specify which campaign.

On the evening news, it is reported that John Dean pleaded guilty today to conspiracy to obstruct justice and defraud the United States. In return for being permitted to plead guilty to this single charge, carrying a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a ten-thousand-dollar fine, Dean has promised “complete coöperation” with the Watergate prosecutors. He must have more to tell, and Cox must feel that what Dean has to tell is of sufficient value to warrant this arrangement.

Richardson is reported to be still trying to work out a compromise on the tapes. Reporters spent the day at the Supreme Court awaiting the President’s appeal, but nothing happened, and now the Court is closed. It is possible that the appeal might still be sent this evening (the Court would probably not turn it away)—too late for the event to be seen on tonight’s news. Another “normal” day, as days, these days, go.

The tailspin begins with the late-evening television news programs. It is announced that the President will not give up the tapes and will not appeal to the Supreme Court on the tapes. Instead, he will make summaries of the tapes available to the courts and the Ervin committee. Senator John Stennis, Democrat of Mississippi, will verify the authenticity of the summaries. Senators Ervin and Baker have met with the President and agreed to the arrangement. The President has also ordered Archibald Cox to cease his efforts to obtain, through the courts, other evidence from the White House. Cox has replied that to obey the order would be a violation of his duties, and that he will not obey. Fred Graham, of CBS, announces the story dressed in black tie. He has rushed from a dinner at the National Press Club, where the first annual Fourth Estate Award was presented to Walter Cronkite.

The news is stunning and makes little sense. On what authority could Ervin and Baker agree to such an arrangement? What on earth is Stennis doing in the picture? Stennis, seventy-two, is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee—one of the most powerful men in the Senate. Stennis had kept the secret of the secret bombing. Stennis had presided over a subcommittee to oversee the C.I.A., but it had rarely met. Stennis is one of the Senate’s barons. When he returned to the Senate recently, after recovering from being shot by a holdup man outside his Washington home early this year, he received a hero’s welcome. Stennis is unlikely to be challenged by his fellow-senators. And Ervin and Baker are now getting at least some access to the tapes, which they have been denied by Judge Sirica. Apparently, the President has played to both senators’ institutional pride, and to their confusion. He has brought them into an agreement that deals out the courts and Cox. Now the issue is drawn over the role of the courts and the Special Prosecutor. Tomorrow, Cox will hold a press conference.

The radio is kept on, as if war had broken out. At twelve-forty-five A.M., CBS radio announces a “net alert,” meaning an alert to the network stations. It sounds very ominous when a network announcer says “net alert”—as if, perhaps, war had in fact broken out. The announcement that follows is that Henry Kissinger has left, in secrecy, for Moscow.

OCTOBER 20

It is a spectacularly beautiful day, warm and springlike. It’s unfair to have to give it up for a Constitutional crisis. Besides, it is Saturday, and Washington is supposed to stop on Saturdays. The term “Constitutional crisis” has been overused in the course of the year. It has been applied to situations better described as Constitutional challenges or congressional failures or institutional confusions. But now this may be the real thing. The President has sought to define and limit the investigation of the executive branch. The President’s offer of summaries of the tapes does not seem to comply with the court order that he turn over the tapes themselves. So there is no choice today but to submit to the events, to watch and listen as men struggle over the meaning of the Constitution. This crisis is ahead of schedule.

The Washington Post has a story by David Broder entitled “Stennis Is Logical Choice.” The story reminds us that last April, as the Watergate dam was cracking, “Stennis left his hospital bed to fly with Mr. Nixon to the dedication of the Stennis Center at a naval air station outside Meridian, Miss.,” and that “in a clear reference to the scandal then emerging in the President’s official family, Stennis said: ‘Mr. President, we admire you for the worker you are. You worked your way up against adversity and you do not panic when things go the wrong way or when the going gets rough.’ ” Stennis is what a friend of mine who works in the Senate calls a “King’s-party” man. The concept goes back to the debates of the Constitutional Convention over the proper powers of the executive—over whether, in the President, the framers of the Constitution were establishing a King by another name. They solved this, or thought they did, by stipulating that the power of the executive derives from the people. The “King’s party,” according to my friend’s definition, is represented by those in the Congress who impute to the President extraordinary powers and duties, which only he is capable of discharging. “King’s-party” men pay particular obeisance to the concept of the President as Commander-in-Chief. “King’s-party” men add to legislative directives the qualifying phrase “as the President may determine.” “King’s-party” men accord a majestic aura to the Presidency, and equate it with whoever is President. They are men close to power, accustomed to power, who in a crisis feel a special bond with the President as the ultimate symbol of power. To John Stennis, the higher duty was to keep the Administration’s secret bombing, and secret C.I.A. operations in Laos, from becoming known to his fellow-senators or to the people. In Washington, this way of proceeding is regarded as a mark of “integrity.” Stennis has played a major role on those rare occasions when the Senate has sat in judgment on one of its own: Joseph McCarthy, Thomas Dodd. In the wake of the Bobby Baker scandal, Stennis headed a Senate ethics committee, which faded from view after making a few recommendations. These exercises relieved the Senate of major embarrassment without disturbing basic arrangements. And they contributed to John Stennis’s reputation for “integrity.” Stennis has said that he is “honored” by this new assignment.

There is a great deal of confusion this morning. It is not at all clear where we are. Will the President fire Cox? What, then, will Richardson do? Richardson keeps ending up in the middle of it. Beneath the suspense is the disturbing sense that people are not proceeding according to the processes. The President is circumventing the courts, and the senators are a party to his action. If the President succeeds in ridding himself of the Special Prosecutor, how can he, or any President, be held accountable? This is a time for the “definers”—those who by speaking out shape the debate on public questions. Who the definers are can change from issue to issue. Sometimes there are no definers. The reaction of other members of Congress will be very important. Senator Lowell Weicker, Republican of Connecticut and member of the Ervin committee, has already called the arrangement a “hollow deal.” Mike Mansfield, the Majority Leader of the Senate, has said that he thought Cox had independent authority. This is important; Mansfield does not often speak out. Carl Albert has said that the arrangement is “interesting.”

The idea of a Special Prosecutor presents a Constitutional dilemma. The problem is how to empower someone to investigate the executive branch who is not also beholden to it. There are but three branches of the government, and the Prosecutor has to be accountable to one of them. If he should be accountable to the Congress, he would not, without further legislation, have sufficient prosecutorial powers. There is no precedent for establishing a Special Prosecutor under the authority of the courts. Last May, the idea just seemed to catch on that the investigation of Watergate could no longer be entrusted to the Justice Department, which was subject to White House authority. But there remained problems of executing the idea. Liberal Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee were holding up Richardson’s nomination to be Attorney General (the President had announced on April 30th that he would name him to replace Kleindienst) until institutional safeguards for an independent Special Prosecutor could be arranged. Richardson at one point tried to make it an issue of his own personal honor, but the senators insisted that the issue was an institutional one. When Richardson reached for Archibald Cox, it seemed a neat stroke. Cox, a Harvard Law School professor, had been Solicitor General in the Justice Department under Robert Kennedy in the Administration of John F. Kennedy. Edward Kennedy and his allies applauded the appointment and eased up on their demands for institutional arrangements. Archibald Cox was one of theirs. Richardson and the committee worked out a set of guidelines covering the office of the Special Prosecutor. They included the following: “The Attorney General will not countermand or interfere with the Special Prosecutor’s decisions or actions,” and “The Special Prosecutor will not be removed from his duties except for extraordinary improprieties.” The President said last night that he was issuing his orders to Cox “as an employee of the executive branch.”

Word comes that Ervin and Baker are saying they did not know that Cox was to be forbidden to proceed. Ervin is said to have thought that he would receive the full transcript of the tapes. One keeps wondering what they thought they were doing yesterday. Why did they even go to the White House without consulting their colleagues? Even now, perhaps an invitation to the White House has a majesty that is irresistible. They may have been acting out of a sense of patriotism. Ervin and Baker are among those who are reluctant to tear at things too much.

The President’s statement, printed in today’s papers, suggests the strategy he used with the two senators—and will be using with the public in the next days—and something of what is on his mind. He speaks of “the strain imposed on the American people by the aftermath of Watergate.” “What matters most, in this critical hour,” he says, “is our ability to act—and to act in a way that enables us to control events, not to be paralyzed and overwhelmed by them.” (This sentence is reminiscent of Six Crises.) The President says, “There are those in the international community who may be tempted by our Watergate-related difficulties at home to misread America’s unity and resolve in meeting the challenges we confront abroad.” Patriotism, then, is to be equated with putting aside the issue of the tapes. The war in the Middle East is dangerous. Kissinger has gone to Moscow.

It is odd how natural it seems that the networks are televising a press conference by the Special Prosecutor. This folksy, tentative, Jimmy Stewart-like character I see on my television screen is not the cool, starchy Professor Cox I remember from attending his classes in labor law with frightened Harvard Law students. The lanky build is familiar, and so is the crew cut. But his casual manner now is disarming—and devastating. Fiddling with his jacket pocket, he says, “I’m certainly not out to get the President of the United States.” He says he worries that “I’m getting too big for my britches.” And then Cox gets to the point, speaking of “what seems to me to be non-compliance with the court’s order.” He slices up the President’s arrangement with the senators, stating that it is “not a question of Senator Stennis’s integrity.” It is important, he says, “to adhere to the established institutions.” The President’s instruction not to pursue the evidence is unacceptable not “because it interferes with Archie Cox” but because it represents “a basic change in the institutional arrangement that was established.” It is, he says, “inconsistent with pledges that were made to the United States Senate and through the Senate to the American people.”

Cox refers to the “slippery term … national security”—a term the President uses to defend, and to keep secret, many of the things that were done. Cox makes it clear that the issue was not just the tapes but the “repeated frustration” of his attempts to obtain several papers, some of which were “put into a special category called ‘Presidential files.’ ” He emphasizes his “respect and affection” for Attorney General Richardson. Of his conversations with Charles Alan Wright on Thursday evening, he says, “It was my impression that I was being presented with things that were drawn in such a way that I could not accept them.” He has slipped a hook into Richardson and the Senate. If he goes, he intends to take their honor with him. He says he does not believe that the President can fire him; only the Attorney General can. Otherwise, he will go to court and challenge the President.

Elliot Richardson is caught in the ultimate conflict in the role of Attorney General—of being both the President’s lawyer and the people’s lawyer. That’s what the establishment of a Special Prosecutor was supposed to resolve. It seems that we have been thinking about Richardson’s conscience, and crises thereof, for years now. His complaisance, when he was Under-Secretary of State, in the Administration’s policy of continuing the war in Vietnam and extending it into Cambodia. His support, when he was Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, of the Administration’s position against busing. His defense, when he was Secretary of Defense, of the bombing of Cambodia. How many crises of conscience can Richardson stand? How many can we?

The afternoon is one of rumors and speculation. No one knows what the President will do. Since Cox’s press conference, reporters have speculated—and speculation has developed into assumption—that the President would not, as they put it, “let this go” for twenty-four hours. If he did, the theory runs, there would be too much time for support for Cox to develop. So if the President is to rid himself of his Special Prosecutor he should do it soon, and fast. The speculation has been fed by the fact that the President’s helicopter, to take Mr. Nixon to Camp David, has been delayed on the South Lawn of the White House. There are rumors that a statement will be forthcoming from the White House by nightfall. Reporters are deployed at the White House, at the Justice Department, and at Cox’s office, waiting.

Senators Kennedy, Birch Bayh, Philip Hart, and John Tunney, all Democrats, have issued a joint statement saying that the compromise may be acceptable to the Ervin committee but that it may “cripple the role” of the Special Prosecutor, and that the President’s instructions to Cox are an “unjustified challenge” to his authority. The ostensible purpose of the statement is to bring pressure on the President to proceed with caution in the matter of firing Cox—to warn him that such an action would bring trouble. But the senators seem to have something other than the President’s interests in mind. Their preferred ground for a showdown with the President would be over a Supreme Court ruling on the tapes.

As the evening news programs go on the air at six-thirty, there is still only rumor and speculation. Nothing has actually happened since Cox’s press conference. At a news bureau in Washington shortly after six-thirty, bulletins begin to cascade from the wire-service machines:

6:48. BULLETIN. WASHINGTON (UPI)—KNOWLEDGEABLE SOURCES CLOSE TO THE WHITE HOUSE SAID SATURDAY NIGHT THAT PRESIDENT NIXON WOULD FIRE SPECIAL PROSECUTOR ARCHIBALD COX FOR “BLATANT AND OPEN DEFIANCE” OF THE PRESIDENT.

6:53. BULLETIN. WASHINGTON (UPI)—PRESIDENT NIXON’S COMPROMISE OVER RELEASE OF THE WATERGATE TAPES BLEW UP SATURDAY NIGHT WITH REPORTS THAT ATTORNEY GENERAL ELLIOT L. RICHARDSON MIGHT BE RESIGNING.

6:56. BULLETIN. (AP) (WASHINGTON)—ATTORNEY GENERAL ELLIOT RICHARDSON APPEARS READY TO RESIGN. THIS IS IN THE WAKE OF PRESIDENT NIXON’S ORDER BARRING FURTHER COURT ACTION TO GET THE WATERGATE TAPES. DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL WILLIAM RUCKELSHAUS GAVE THE IMPRESSION AS HE TALKED WITH NEWSMEN AFTER A DAY OF MEETINGS WITH RICHARDSON AND OTHERS. … RUCKELSHAUS … REFERRED REPORTERS TO A WHITE HOUSE STATEMENT TO BE MADE LATER TONIGHT.

Cox’s office is at work. At 7:03 P.M., the Associated Press reports, “Phone calls and telegrams poured Saturday afternoon into the office of Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox supporting his opposition to President Nixon’s proposed compromise in the Watergate tapes case. ‘Only two out of a hundred calls that we’ve gotten have been against Mr. Cox,’ a spokesman said.”

At 7:31 P.M., the Associated Press reports: “Newsmen at the White House were expecting an announcement there relating to the controversy, but the White House would not comment. After returning to the Justice Department from a brief trip to the White House, Richardson remained unavailable for comment.”

7:32. (UPI) ADVISORY. EDITORS: THE WHITE HOUSE HAS NOT PROMISED AN ANNOUNCEMENT TONIGHT, ALTHOUGH THERE ARE MANY INDICATIONS THAT A STATEMENT WILL BE ISSUED BEFORE THE NIGHT IS OUT.

8:31. WASHINGTON (UPI)—PRESIDENT NIXON THREW OPEN THE DOORS OF HIS OVAL OFFICE AND THE CABINET ROOM SATURDAY TO THOUSANDS OF VISITORS ON THE FALL GARDEN TOUR OF THE WHITE HOUSE GROUNDS. THE TOUR FOLLOWED A BEAUTIFICATION AWARD CEREMONY IN WHICH PAT NIXON AND DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA MAYOR WALTER E. WASHINGTON PRESENTED AWARDS FOR CONTRIBUTIONS TO ENHANCE THE BEAUTY OF THE NATION’S CAPITAL.

8:31. BULLETIN. WASHINGTON (UPI)—PRESIDENT NIXON ACCEPTED ATTORNEY GENERAL ELLIOT L. RICHARDSON’S RESIGNATION SATURDAY NIGHT AND FIRED SPECIAL WATERGATE PROSECUTOR ARCHIBALD COX.

At 8:31 P.M., on CBS, Nelson Benton is on the White House lawn, breathless and seemingly shaken. He delivers his report in much the same manner that war correspondents did from battlefronts in Vietnam. The President has ordered that Cox be fired. Richardson refused to fire Cox, and has resigned. William Ruckelshaus, Richardson’s deputy, refused to fire Cox, and was fired. Robert Bork, formerly Solicitor General, has fired Cox and is now the Acting Attorney General. The office of Special Prosecutor has been abolished.

At this time, in this verbose city, no one seems to know what to say.

The journalists, at least, have something to do. Tomorrow’s papers must be published. There will be television specials later this evening. There is research to be done on Robert Bork. Nobody knows very much about the Acting Attorney General. All the telephone lines at the White House are busy. Word comes that the F.B.I. has sealed off the offices of Cox, Richardson, and Ruckelshaus. Thoughts turn to the President’s emergency powers. We had given little thought to Clarence Kelley, the new director of the F.B.I.—to what manner of man he is.

The news is coming too fast. Faster and harder than anyone expected. It is almost impossible to absorb. Summary firings are not our style. Something about Saturday night—a private time, the dark. Too much disarrangement at once. The speed of the events has become part of their substance. One journalist says that it’s like being in a banana republic. Another, ordinarily an outspoken defender of the Administration, says it’s like downtown Santiago. Their statements bespeak anxieties that are beyond matters of atmospherics. An enigmatic President has summarily fired three men—men who had built some public trust. What seemed logical, and even inexorable, this afternoon has taken on unpredictable and disturbing proportions. There is no way of telling what the President was thinking. Did he consider the impact that these events would have? Could he know? Did he care? There is another question people are asking. It’s whether the President has acted in an irrational burst of temper. It is clear that the President will go to some lengths to assert his independence of the courts and of prosecution. Will he succeed in this? Is there to be any check on him—or any President—ever again? Do we have a system of laws?

Where are we? The United States had three Attorneys General today. Carl Albert is still first in line of succession for the Presidency. Then James Eastland. We have had our first public resignations over policy. The Special Prosecutor’s office has been abolished, and the investigation of Watergate returned to the Justice Department, by Presidential fiat.

The reactions of the politicians begin to come over the wires. What the definers will say is important.

10:03. (AP). URGENT. WASHINGTON. SEN. EDWARD M. KENNEDY, D-MASS., CALLED COX’S FIRING “A RECKLESS ACT OF DESPERATION BY A PRESIDENT WHO IS AFRAID OF THE SUPREME COURT, WHO HAS NO RESPECT FOR LAW AND NO REGARD FOR A MAN OF CONSCIENCE. … THE BURDEN IS NOW ON CONGRESS AND THE COURTS TO NULLIFY THIS HISTORIC INSULT TO THE RULE OF LAW AND TO THE NATION’S SYSTEM OF JUSTICE.”

Gerald Ford: “The President had no other choice” than to fire Cox.

Senator Edmund Muskie (Democrat of Maine): The President’s action “threatens to destroy our system of laws. It smacks of dictatorship.” Muskie suggests holding hearings on impeachment.

Senator Edward Brooke (Republican of Massachusetts): “This act on the part of the President, under the circumstances, is sufficient evidence which the House of Representatives should consider to begin impeachment proceedings.” The subject of impeachment is now in the open. It is here.

Senator Charles Percy (Republican of Illinois): “We have a tremendous quandary … tragic war in the Middle East. … Thank heavens we have Dr. Kissinger in Moscow.”

Archibald Cox: “Whether ours shall continue to be a government of laws and not of men is now for Congress and ultimately the American people.”

Late in the evening, I caught up with more of the details of Ron Ziegler’s announcement at the White House a few hours ago. He said that the President’s compromise was accepted by responsible leaders of Congress and the country. Ron Ziegler said that the Watergate prosecution will continue “with thoroughness and vigor.”

It is announced on the radio that Saudi Arabia has cut off its oil supplies to the United States. Can’t think about that now.