Word: ruckelshaus
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...massive denunciation was directed at the President's abrupt dismissal of Special Watergate Prosecutor Archibald Cox and the resultant departures on principle of two of the scandal-ridden Administration's untainted remaining officials, Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus. It was aimed too at Nixon's original refusal to turn over tapes and documents of his Watergate-related communications as ordered by a U.S. court of appeals...
Shortly after the Cox press conference, Richardson and his top aides were gathered in his office at the Justice Department. His White House telephone rang. The caller (apparently Haig) conveyed the message: "Fire Cox." Replied Richardson: "That I could not do." The Attorney General turned to his deputy, Bill Ruckelshaus. "You'll have to do it, Bill." Solemnly Ruckelshaus answered: "I wouldn't do it, either." All eyes in the office turned to the third man in the department's hierarchy, Solicitor General Bork. Said Bork slowly: "I probably would." It turned out to be a prophetic...
...circumstances, therefore, I felt that I have no choice but to resign." Nixon accepted with a one-sentence note: "It is with the deepest regret and with an understanding of the circumstances which brought you to your decision that I accept your resignation." In his note to the President, Ruckelshaus wrote: "I am sorry my conscience will not permit me to carry out your instructions to fire Archibald Cox." Ruckelshaus was never directly informed that he had been fired, but he felt obliged to resign...
WILLIAM D. RUCKELSHAUS. A third-generation Republican politician, Ruckelshaus, 41, also took his law degree at Harvard (1960) and served for five years in the Indiana attorney general's office. Elected to the state house of representatives, he was soon chosen majority leader. In 1969 he joined the Justice Department as Assistant Attorney General in charge of the civil division, and became the Administration's unofficial emissary to radical young people. He negotiated with student leaders on logistics for the massive 1970 antiwar demonstration in Washington, quietly calmed a potentially explosive confrontation over a trial of Black Panthers...
President Nixon named him the first administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in December 1970, and Ruckelshaus won a wide reputation as tough, fair and unusually independent of the White House. For three years he walked the narrow line-without a serious misstep-between suspicious environmentalists and hostile businessmen. He compromised in his most publicized struggle, giving automobile manufacturers a one-year extension of a 1975 deadline for the installation of antipollution devices on cars while slapping on tough interim standards. Nonetheless, his tenacious fight and his insistence that presidential aides stay out of it enhanced his prestige. Last April...