Title: The Saturday Night Massacre
Class: AP
Duration: 1 class period of 45 Minutes, this would be a 2d or 3d class in an intense study of the Watergate Scandal as both a human and Constitutional crisis.
Core Learning Goal: 1, Political Systems, The student will demonstrate an understanding of the historical development and current status of principles, institutions and processes of political systems.
Indicator of Learning:
(8), The student will evaluate the effect of presidential
decisions affecting rights of individuals and groups in
Content to achieve this indicator: President Nixon’s decision to have Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox fired and the steps he took towards that end, including accepting the resignation of Elliot Richardson, the firing of William Ruckelshaus and the eventual firing of Cox by Robert Bork.
Objectives: Students will look at the actions taken by Nixon from several perspectives. They will be able to explain the Constitutional issues involved with the firings, and the concept of Presidential privilege as it evolved during this period. Finally, after completing this lesson, students will be able to draw conclusions about the character of the many people involved in the “Massacre” and how power and politics affect ones character, or vice versa.
Vocabulary: Saturday Night Massacre, Presidential Privilege, CREEP. Impeachment,
Separation of Powers
Materials: Text material, transcripts of the “tapes”, web access as indicated below.
Outline:
A. Motivation: (5-7 minutes depending on discussion) Students will begin by watching the video clip of Nixon’s resignation: http://webcorp.com/video/nixon/ (possible audio alternative – nixonfar4 at same site)
QUESTION: He is the ONLY President ever forced to resign. Considering some of the people we have studied so far, isn’t that saying a lot? How did it all come to happen?
B. Broad discussion/Debate (20 minutes) After discussing the tape, students will move to a review of the Watergate break-in. This class will be picking up at the point where Special Prosecutor Archibald has demanded the tapes. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/watergate/articles/102173-2.htm
By this point, Nixon and the committee have agreed to let him “summarize” the tapes and submit these summaries to the Senate.
QUESTIONS: Why does Cox resist this agreement?
What about Executive Privilege?
Should it apply to an investigation like this?
C. Now we move into the personal arena. After reviewing the chronology of the firings Elliot Richardson resigned rather than carry out an order he felt was illegal. What about following orders? Could you make that decision? In the wake of his resignation, Nixon fired Ruckelshaus. Then he got Bork to fire Cox.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/watergate/articles/102173-2.htm
Quandary! Nixon couldn’t fire Cox directly because of separation of powers. The Supreme Court said that separation of powers doesn’t apply to the tapes! Just how narrow can definitions be?
D. Summary – Nixon ended up resigning to forestall impeachment.
What part did the Saturday Night Massacre play in this resignation?
How did each of the following contribute to Nixon’s downfall?
1. Archibald Cox
2. John Sirica
3.
The Supreme Court of the
4. Richard Nixon
E. We will begin this section by looking at the decision rendered by Federal Judge John Sirica and the July, 1974 Supreme Court ruling that upheld Sirica’s decision.
http://oyez.nwu.edu/cases/cases.cgi?mode=title&command=do_search&andor=any&title=nixon This is an audio portion of the discussion
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&navby=case&vol=418&invol=683 This is the hard copy.
Questions: How far did the Court say Presidential immunity goes?
What about separation of powers?
Can you imagine circumstances where the Congress SHOULDN’T be allowed to see material?
F. AP tickler question: How might this event have changed the Presidency?
(The Senate was in the midst of confirming Ford and could have chosen to delay or vote down the confirmation, leaving Speaker of the House Carl Albert (D-Okla.) next in line if Nixon was forced out!
Webliography:
http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/saturdaymassacre_980917.html
Good general background
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/watergate/articles/102173-2.htm
Original Post story
http://www.nara.gov/education/teaching/watergate/chronolo.html
Good chronology and intro to characters
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/watergate.html
portions of the tapes, including the “smoking gun”
http://www.webcorp.com/sounds/nixonfar.htm
Nixon’s farewell speech, in selected clips
http://oyez.nwu.edu/cases/cases.cgi
Supreme court decision
http://www.nara.gov/education/teaching/watergate/watergat.html
Additional documents
Historiography:
The Watergate Scandal was one of the darkest moments in modern American history. That the nation survived it is a strong indicator of the elemental solidity of our Democratic system. At the same time, the fact that it happened at all demonstrates how fragile that system can be.
Depending on whose articles you
read, or what radio lecturers you hear, there are a number of varying
explanations for the Watergate break-in.
One inescapable fact is that the investigation of the
By October
of 1973, the heat was definitely on.
Since May 18, the Senate Watergate Committee had been holding televised
hearings on the break-in.
Attorney-General Elliott Richardson appointed former Solicitor General
Archibald Cox to be the “Special Prosecutor” for the Justice Department. In July, Alexander Butterfield, former presidential appointments secretary,
informed the committee that the President had been taping White House
conversations since his reelection. The
committee demanded the tapes, but Nixon resisted, claiming Executive
Privilege. (In July of
1974, Nixon would be ordered to turn over those tapes, but the Massacre was
history by then).
After making a deal with the Senate
Committee to turn over summaries of his taped conversations, Nixon expanded on
the agreement by ordering Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox to make no further
attempts to obtain tapes. Recognizing in
this order and attempt by Nixon to sidestep the issue, Cox refused and
announced his intention to continue pursuing the tapes at a public news
conference. This is where it starts to
hit the fan. Unable to fire Cox himself,
(Since he was appointed by the Attorney General, not the President), Nixon
orders Attorney General Richardson to do it.
“It was fairly obvious to me that what the president was doing was fundamentally wrong, and therefore asking me to act as the instrument of what I saw as something unconscionable was something I was unwilling to do.” (http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/saturdaymassacre_980917.html)
At this point, Solicitor General Robert Bork became acting Attorney General and carried out Nixon’s orders, firing Cox and abolishing the office of Special Prosecutor.
I think it is fair
to say that no one in the Nixon White House expected the firestorm of protest
and outrage that followed these actions.
Nixon ended up turning over the documents, especially after the 1974
Supreme Court decision left him no constitutional grounds for resistance. Calls for impeachment grew, and a new law
creating an Office of Special Prosecutor that answered to the Congress, not the
President, was created. Nixon resigned,
and Ford, (whose confirmation for VP was also threatened by the Massacre)
became President and pardoned Nixon.
Historians and political scientists
will debate various elements of the Saturday night Massacre, and its role in
the Watergate scandal, for years to come.
For my students the essential aspects are its crises, both personal and
Constitutional. A large part of our
study involves the recognition that humans act within our system, and sometimes
they are more human than others. How
people respond to the demands of a Democratic Republic, both for good and evil,
is the most important lesson of this day’s work.