# Archibald Cox Harvard law professor, Kennedy's Solicitor General, and the first **Watergate Special Prosecutor** — fired in the **Saturday Night Massacre** of October 20, 1973 for refusing to stop doing his job. He is the vault's reference case for what happens when prosecutorial independence collides with the removal power. ## The Saturday Night Massacre Cox was appointed in May 1973 with written assurances of independence. When the existence of the White House taping system became public, he subpoenaed the tapes. Nixon refused, offering instead a written summary verified by a single senator, and ordered Cox to stop pursuing them. Cox declined publicly. Nixon ordered Attorney General **Elliot Richardson** to fire him; Richardson resigned rather than comply. Deputy Attorney General **William Ruckelshaus** was ordered next; he also refused and was dismissed or resigned. **[[Robert Bork]]**, third in line as Solicitor General, carried out the order. The public reaction was immediate and enormous, and it is the part that actually mattered. Impeachment resolutions were introduced within days, a replacement special prosecutor (Leon Jaworski) had to be appointed with stronger guarantees, and the tapes were ultimately produced after *[[United States v. Nixon]]*. ## Why he matters for the KB **The firing worked and it destroyed him anyway.** Nixon had the legal authority to remove Cox and exercised it successfully — Cox was gone that night. What the president could not control was the political cost, which arrived within 72 hours and set the impeachment machinery in motion. The lesson the vault draws is not that the law stopped the removal. It didn't. **Two officials resigning rather than comply, and a public that reacted, are what converted a lawful firing into a catastrophe.** That makes Cox the direct precedent for every subsequent fight over investigators of the executive — special counsels, inspectors general, US attorneys — and the case that establishes the real variable. Formal independence protections have consistently proven weak; what has occasionally held is the willingness of subordinates to refuse an order and absorb the consequences. Bork's role is the counter-case. Someone in the chain will usually comply, and the person who does is not necessarily punished for it — Bork was later nominated to the Supreme Court, though the nomination failed for other reasons. ## See Also - [[Richard Nixon]] · [[Watergate Scandal]] · [[United States v. Nixon]] - [[Robert Bork]] — carried out the order - [[John Dean]] — the White House counsel who testified - [[Rule of Law]]