Saturday Night Massacre
The title Saturday Night Massacre ( German literally Saturday night massacre ) gave some journalists October 20, 1973, as this day was determined by resignations and new appointments to the office of Justice Minister under Richard Nixon .
As part of the Watergate Affair , it was announced on July 13, 1973 that there had been a tape recording system in the Oval Office since 1971 , through which all conversations and telephone calls of President Nixon were recorded. A legal dispute broke out over the publication of the tapes, after all Nixon wanted to prevent publication at all costs. Several processes followed.
Nixon lost the trial for the release of the recordings, and public pressure on him grew. He proposed a compromise: The Democratic Senator John Stennis should be allowed to hear the tapes and then prepare a summary for the chief investigator of the committee of inquiry into the Watergate scandal, Archibald Cox .
When Cox rejected Nixon's proposal, the so-called Saturday Night Massacre occurred on October 20, 1973 : Nixon wanted to get the unyielding investigator Cox out of the way. His chief of staff, Alexander Haig , on Nixon's behalf, ordered Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson to fire Cox. However, Richardson refused and immediately resigned. After that, Haig put the Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus under pressure as well. But Ruckelshaus also refused and also resigned. He was referring to the fact that he had taken his oath on the constitution and not on the president.
Only the successor Robert Bork , previously a representative of the government at the Supreme Court and thus third in the hierarchy of the Ministry of Justice, carried out the order and dismissed Cox. Leon Jaworski became the new chief investigator on November 1, 1973 . This forced the handover of the tape recordings from the White House before the Supreme Court . This included the famous smoking-gun tape, which proved that Nixon had personally ordered to obstruct the judiciary's investigation.
The Saturday Night Massacre is considered one of Nixon's biggest mistakes. He took the right to stand above the constitution and to enjoy de facto immunity. This met with strong rejection even in arch-conservative circles. On August 9, 1974, almost ten months after the Saturday Night Massacre , Nixon announced his resignation and was thus in front of his impending impeachment .
Web links
- Article on Spiegel Online from October 20, 2008.
Individual evidence
- ^ Leon Jaworski Facts. Your Dictionary, 2005, accessed September 19, 2014 . (English)