The president and his staff are mired in scandal. Congressional committees and a special prosecutor are investigating. This was in 1973 during the Watergate scandal when Richard Nixon was president. But, William Ruckelshaus, who served several positions in President Richard Nixon's administration, says it felt a lot like today, when investigations into possible collusion between President Donald Trump's election campaign and Russia are making headlines.
Former Environmental Protection Agency Director William Ruckelshaus, who also served briefly as acting FBI director and deputy attorney general under Nixon, lives in the Seattle area. He appeared at anevent at Folio: the Seattle Athenaeum in downtown Seattle along with retired D.C. political journalist Morton Kondracke.
Kondracke asked Ruckelshaus about a meeting he had in 1973 in the Oval Office with President Nixon. It was when Nixon was asking Ruckelshaus to temporarily serve as FBI director, meaning he'd be overseeing the Watergate investigation. Nixon insisted he had nothing to do with the cover up of the break-in at Democratic Party Headquarters by GOP operatives.
"He made a very convincing statement to me that he had not had anything to do with it. He was completely above it. He said,'You tell them to leave no stone unturned,'" Ruckelshause told the Folio audience.
Of course, it wasn't long before Nixon told Ruckelshaus to fire special Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox. Ruckelshaus refused and quit his job, becoming part of what came to be known as the Saturday Night Massacre.
One difference Ruckelshaus sees between the Watergate scandal and the situation today is that he doesn't see the same level of anger at the president. He says it was public anger that forced Congress to move toward impeachment of Nixon. In the end, Nixon resigned.
But, Ruckelshaus says, if you look at scandals involving Presidents through the years, at this point in any scandal, there's really no way to predict how it will end.
