<Tr> <Td> <Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> </Td> </Tr> <Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> <P> The Saturday Night Massacre was a series of events on the evening of Saturday, October 20, 1973, during the Watergate scandal in the United States . U.S. President Richard Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire independent special prosecutor Archibald Cox; Richardson refused and resigned effective immediately . Nixon then ordered Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox; Ruckelshaus refused, and also resigned . Nixon then ordered the third-most - senior official at the Justice Department official Solicitor General Robert Bork, to fire Cox . Bork considered resigning, but did as Nixon asked . The political and public reaction to Nixon's actions were negative and highly damaging to the president . A court later ruled that the dismissal was illegal, and a new special counsel appointed . </P> <P> U.S. Attorney General Elliot Richardson had appointed Cox in May 1973 after promising the House Judiciary Committee that he would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the events surrounding the break - in of the Democratic National Committee's offices at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., on June 17, 1972 . The appointment was created as a career reserved position in the Justice department, meaning it came under the authority of the attorney general who could only remove the special prosecutor "for cause", e.g., gross improprieties or malfeasance in office . Richardson had, in his confirmation hearings before the U.S. Senate, promised not to use his authority to dismiss the Watergate special prosecutor, unless for cause . </P>

Who was fired or forced to resign in the massacre