Archibald Cox: Conscience of a Nation.

• Author: Weakland, Brian L.

By Ken Gormley Reviewed by Brian L. Weakland

The nation has waited nearly 25 years for the final, perhaps most insightful first hand account of the Watergate scandal. It was worth the wait.

Archibald Cox, the Harvard professor and distinguished solicitor general, whose unyielding love for the law and obsessive search for truth despite a presidential stone wall, emerged as one of the few heroes in a dark period of constitutional crisis. In May 1973, then Attorney General Elliot Richardson tabbed Cox as "special prosecutor" to investigate the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex and the involvement of government officials and agencies in the cover-up. In October 1973, when he pushed President Nixon and his lawyers into a Supreme Court battle over Oval Office tape recordings, Cox was fired by Nixon, in what the press termed, "the Saturday Night Massacre."

This ultimate wrongful termination became the defining moment in Cox's life. In Archibald Cox: Conscience of a Nation, the authorized biography of Cox, Professor Ken Gormley deftly uses the firing as a fulcrum in the distinguished career of Cox. Before, he was the consummate lawyer--espousing lofty social policy before the Supreme Court and handling his mission with the highest ethics. After, Cox is portrayed as a man from whom the pendulum of history has swung--retreating to largely scholarly and agrarian pursuits.

Gormley is a student of Cox and Watergate. His treatise is not hero worship but rather, in many ways, an engrossing tale of a conscientious public servant whose ardor for justice became merely grist for high level political machines. Cox's role as special prosecutor was the precursor for today's independent counsel; he defined the role and, to some extent, scourged the job. As Gormley points out, Cox invited prominent members of the...