In a year surfeited with surprise, in a month of successive shocks, it was by any reckoning the most tumultuous week of modern U.S. political history.
Richard Nixon's survival as President was in grave doubt, and—by Nixon's account—so was the peace of the world for a few tense hours. The foreign crisis was resolved, but the unmaking of the presidency of Richard Nixon gathered such momentum as to almost ensure even more crises in the days ahead.
The week was propelled through its course by public protest against the President unprecedented in its intensity and breadth. Individual Americans demanded Richard Nixon's resignation or impeachment in 275,000 telegrams that overloaded Western Union circuits in Washington. Much of the legal profession, most of organized labor and many key religious leaders joined the assault. Nearly two dozen resolutions to at least begin impeachment proceedings were introduced in the House of Representatives. At the shocked White House, even the President's loyal chief of staff, Alexander Haig, termed the conflagration "a fire storm."
The 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.
Fixed Smile. Buckling under the massive pressure, the President once again abandoned a position that he had repeatedly proclaimed as inviolate, dramatically agreeing to yield up his long-guarded tapes. Once again turning about, he announced that a new special prosecutor would be appointed. He seemed almost eager to seize on a new crisis in the Middle East to claim his indispensability and strength, but such was the low state of his credibility that an emotional and unfortunate controversy erupted over whether he had ordered a global alert of all U.S. military units at least in part to divert attention from his own grave problems.
Striding with a fixed smile into a solemn gathering of newsmen, Nixon confronted television cameras and declared that he had been the victim of reporting that he assailed variously as "outrageous, vicious, distorted, frantic and hysterical" (see Hugh Sidey on the press conference, page 23). Perspiring and barely containing his anger at times, Nixon insisted that "the tougher it gets, the cooler I get." The recent scandal-inspired shocks that have so jolted the nation "will not affect me and my doing my job," he said. He had been through so much controversy ("it has been my lot") that "when I have to face an international crisis, I've got what it takes."
He vowed that "as long as I can carry out that kind of responsibility, I'm going to continue to do this job." With dozens of reporters still shouting "Mr. President!" Nixon abruptly left the podium.
Although the flood of protest telegrams hardly abated after the announcement that Nixon would hand over the tapes, this move plus the President's emphasis on international crisis