THE SATURDAY NIGHT MASSACRE
50 years later, still a warning signal
Fifty years ago — on October 20, 1973 — President Richard M. Nixon took action that stunned the nation and threatened to upend the rule of law: He fired Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox and tried to shut down the criminal investigation that had plagued his presidency. The Saturday Night Massacre produced a firestorm of public protest, led to the public release of damning tapes implicating Nixon in the Watergate coverup and forced the president to resign in disgrace.
A half-century later, the lessons of the Saturday Night Massacre are more hauntingly relevant than ever. Nixon and his attorneys pushed the legal system to the brink, betting that hyper-cautious judges, timid grand jurors and spineless members of Congress would buckle under the pressure.
Nixon came dangerously close to succeeding.
America needs courage
It was only because Archibald Cox stood up to Nixon at a press conference — taking his case directly to the American people — and Nixon’s own Attorney General, Elliot Richardson, resigned in protest rather than fire Cox, that the delicate threads of the justice system didn’t snap.
Federal Judge John J. Sirica and ordinary citizens on the D.C. Watergate grand jury also displayed remarkable courage, enduring massive pressure from the chief executive who wasn’t afraid to destroy his enemies, ultimately holding Nixon to account.
Yet, history easily could have been written differently. Nixon’s lawyers came close to forcing Cox to accept a nefarious plan, by which the elderly Senator John Stennis of Mississippi — who had hearing problems and had just suffered a gunshot wound in a burglary attempt — would be the only person to listen to the tapes and sign off on a “summary,” precluding Cox and his prosecutors from getting the evidence.
With that plan hatched, on the night of the Saturday Night Massacre, Nixon’s loyalists sealed off the Attorney General’s office and moved to purge Cox’s investigative files. The system hung by a thread and chaos engulfed Washington. It was only because there were silent heroes — like Cox, Richardson, Judge Sirica and a group of young, principled Watergate prosecutors, along with dogged journalists — that the country was saved from a horrific derailment.
As four different criminal prosecutions of former President Donald Trump unfold across the country, an alarming question presents itself: What happens to our country when the system doesn’t hold?
Then and now
At a 50-year retrospective on the Saturday Night Massacre that I was privileged to moderate this week in Washington at the National Press Club — the site of Cox’s historic press conference — that question hung like a pall over the distinguished Watergate-era
speakers. These included iconic Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward; CBS broadcast legend Lesley Stahl; Watergate Special Prosecution Force veterans Richard Ben-Veniste and Jill WineBanks; Elliot Richardson’s top aide J.T. Smith; and retired U.S.
Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, then a young lawyer on the Watergate Prosecution team.
As panelists compared the Nixon and Trump sagas, several truths leapt out: Both Nixon and Trump were so fixated on achieving greatness (at any cost) that they became swept up in criminal cases and wrecked their own legacies. Both men tried to manipulate the system of laws and government to extinguish their criminal problems, only making things worse.
Yet stark differences exist between these two combative ex-presidents that serve as a flashing warning signal. Nixon, for all his flaws, was a sophisticated lawyer who ultimately understood that rulings by judges, subpoenas issued by grand juries, and other anchors of our American justice system — eventually — had to be obeyed. It’s unclear from his actions thus far that former President Trump accepts that premise. Nor is it clear, no matter how hard the criminal justice system comes crashing down on him, that his attitude will change.
Richard Ben-Veniste, former Chief of the Watergate Task Force, told me that President Nixon had a sense of shame that ultimately caused him to capitulate, once the smoking guns of evidence appeared in the White House tapes. It’s highly questionable, he added, whether Trump will ever allow shame to enter the calculation.
Moreover, no matter how damning the evidence at these four criminal trials, Bob Woodward and others agreed,
it’s doubtful Trump will ever admit defeat. Today, some supporters of the former president view that as a sign of strength and a norm-busting virtue. The prevailing culture in 1973 viewed it as disqualifying to hold office.
It depends on us
Tragically, the painful experiences of Watergate culminating in the Saturday Night Massacre are likely mild compared to what the nation is in store for during the next 15 months, leading up to the election of 2024.
The big take-away from the Saturday Night Massacre is simultaneously reassuring and frightening: If the right people step up, our system of government can be saved
and even strengthened when crises strike. But who are those people, those silent heroes? Archibald Cox foreshadowed the answer the night of his firing, when he issued a simple statement before going to bed: “Whether ours shall continue to be a government of laws and not of men is now for Congress and ultimately the American people.”
In other words — and here’s the frightening part — those people are us.