There’s a certain Dickensian quality to Thomas Mallon’s always inventive novel, Watergate: a large cast of characters from widely different backgrounds and classes, some tragic, others comic; varied back stories and tag-lines (mostly personality quirks); a carefully plotted narrative that brings most of the main characters back into the story after many years for a curtain call. The rub, of course, is that except for some minor characters, totally invented by the author, the others are based on real historical figures—or so they seem today, decades later, after events that began in 1972. I suspect that those of us who lived through the incidents depicted will have a significantly different reaction to Watergate than those born afterwards, though both groups of readers will find the story mesmerizing, difficult to put aside, in true Dickensian form.
One example will suffice: the Saturday Night Massacre, October 20, 1973. When Archibald Cox refused to accept summaries of the disputed tape recordings, Nixon ordered Elliot Richardson, the Attorney General, to fire special prosecutor Cox. Richardson (according to Mallon) had apparently agreed but then quickly reneged, and resigned instead. So did William D. Ruckelshaus, his first deputy. The department’s number three man implemented the firing. Mallon writes, “Then the rumors arrived: that the FBI had gone to the special prosecutor’s office on K Street—perhaps to seize files; perhaps to protect them. Or the files [what Cox already had on Nixon] had already been hidden by the special prosecutor’s staff, who—rumor also had it—were rushing from their homes to the office.”
Richardson’s refusal to fire Cox and his resignation were all over the news that evening. Those of us who worked in Washington knew that the city was rife with rumors. Nixon was going to suspend the constitution. Martial Law would be instigated—anything so that he could stay in office, as the wagons circled the White House. The news of Cox’s firing spread like wild fire through a party my wife and I were attending in the city that Saturday night. As we drove home hours later along Western Avenue (the street that separates the District of Columbia from Maryland) and approached Connecticut Avenue (which passes near the White House several miles further into the city), police cars blocked entry to the city on that major route. Driving the rest of the way home, we were convinced that Nixon had, indeed, hijacked the constitution and the country was doomed.
One example will suffice: the Saturday Night Massacre, October 20, 1973. When Archibald Cox refused to accept summaries of the disputed tape recordings, Nixon ordered Elliot Richardson, the Attorney General, to fire special prosecutor Cox. Richardson (according to Mallon) had apparently agreed but then quickly reneged, and resigned instead. So did William D. Ruckelshaus, his first deputy. The department’s number three man implemented the firing. Mallon writes, “Then the rumors arrived: that the FBI had gone to the special prosecutor’s office on K Street—perhaps to seize files; perhaps to protect them. Or the files [what Cox already had on Nixon] had already been hidden by the special prosecutor’s staff, who—rumor also had it—were rushing from their homes to the office.”
Richardson’s refusal to fire Cox and his resignation were all over the news that evening. Those of us who worked in Washington knew that the city was rife with rumors. Nixon was going to suspend the constitution. Martial Law would be instigated—anything so that he could stay in office, as the wagons circled the White House. The news of Cox’s firing spread like wild fire through a party my wife and I were attending in the city that Saturday night. As we drove home hours later along Western Avenue (the street that separates the District of Columbia from Maryland) and approached Connecticut Avenue (which passes near the White House several miles further into the city), police cars blocked entry to the city on that major route. Driving the rest of the way home, we were convinced that Nixon had, indeed, hijacked the constitution and the country was doomed.
