Being Nixon: A Man Divided

by Evan Thomas

RICHARDSON: Yeah. NIXON: The point is, I’m not sure you should have one.13 Richardson replied that he would think about it. The new attorney general proceeded to appoint as Watergate special prosecutor a man Nixon would come to fear and loathe. Archibald Cox, a Harvard Law professor, was, like Richardson, a true believer in the rule of law and a high Wasp whose tribal loyalties did not lie with Richard Nixon. Cox proceeded to recruit a staff heavily laced with Harvard grads and former aides to Senator Edward Kennedy. Appointed solicitor general by President Kennedy, Cox himself was so close to the Kennedys that he had watched the 1960 election returns with JFK. At Cox’s swearing-in ceremony in late May, Senator Kennedy and members of his family were guests, a fact duly reported to Nixon, who had been warned by Kissinger that Cox, a former fellow Harvard professor “has been fanatically anti-Nixon all the years I have known him.” (At first, Nixon professed to be unconcerned, telling Haig that Cox was an ineffectual Harvard professor who would take five years and still not get to the bottom of the case.)14