In May of 1973, Elliot Richardson was poised to become Richard Nixon's new Attorney General.

He didn't know yet that he would be out of the job in less than six months.

During his confirmation hearings, Republican and Democratic senators alike

demanded that Richardson appoint an independent special prosecutor to investigate the Watergate affair.

...reports that no more hearings will be held until Richardson names a special prosecutor with guidelines

guaranteeing his independence.

Richardson promised that he would. Now, if you were going to appoint a special prosecutor,

someone to dig into a controversial, high-stakes, intrinsically political situation,

you'd probably look for someone with a reputation for being nonpartisan,

someone without strong political ties, someone it would be difficult to dismiss as biased.

Archibald Cox was none of those things,

which makes it really hard to understand why Richardson picked him.

Archival Cox, a big, blunt, crew-cut Harvard Law School professor, a liberal Democrat.

First off, Cox was like a cartoon of everything that Nixon and his biggest supporters hated.

He was in the elitist East Coast intellectual who wore bow ties and tweed suits.

Even worse, he had worked for John F. Kennedy in the 1960 campaign against Nixon.

When he was sworn in a special prosecutor, Cox invited Ted Kennedy, literally Nixon's

worst enemy, to attend as a guest.

Nixon was not happy about Elliot Richardson's choice.

In his memoir, he would later write that if the Attorney General had set

out specifically to find the man that he, Nixon, would have trusted least, he couldn't have done

better than Archibald Cox. Nixon also described Cox as a parasite and a partisan viper.

...