sue the investigation, resigned rather than obey Nixon's order to fire Cox. On October 20, Nixon dismissed both Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus and Cox. This "Saturday night massacre" ignited a rush of criticism, and triggered serious moves to impeach Nixon. Nixon then agreed to give the tapes to Sirica, and he appointed Leon Jaworski, a Texas attorney, to succeed Cox. Nixon guaranteed that Jaworski would be free of White House control.One shocking disclosure followed another. The White House said that two of the subpoenaed conversations had never been taped. One tape contained an eighteen minute gap. White House officials and Nixon's secretary, Rose Mary Woods, gave confusing testimony on how the gap might have occurred. Six court appointed electronics experts said that at least five separate erasures had caused the gap. Many people concluded that someone had deliberately destroyed evidence.On March 1, 1974, seven former aides of the president Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell, Colson, Strachan, Robert Mardian, and Kenneth Parkinson were indicted for conspiring to botch the Watergate investigation. Colson later pleaded guilty to charges concerning the Ellsberg case and was dismissed of the cover-up charges. Charges against Strachan were dropped. The remaining five went on trial and all but Parkinson were found guilty. Evidence against Nixon, given to Judge Sirica by the grand jury, was turned over by the judge to the House Judiciary Committee, which had begun its impeachment investigation. When the committee subpoenaed forty-two more tapes, Nixon agreed to release publicly and to the committee the edited transcripts of forty-six conversations.Jaworski asked Sirica to subpoena sixty-four tapes and documents. Nixon refused to honor the subpoena, and Jaworski took the issue to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court rejected Nixon's claim that he had absolute authority to withhold material from the prosecutor, and orde...
