November 17, 1973: President Richard Nixon gives a press conference at the hotel where he's staying on vacation, the Walt Disney World Contemporary Resort, outside the famous theme park, near Orlando, Florida.
He was trying to get away from the troubles of the Watergate scandal, and it wasn't working. He had taken the desperate act of firing Archibald Cox, the Special Prosecutor investigating the scandal, making him look like he had something he really, really wanted to hide. In the process, his Attorney General, Elliot Richardson, refused to do it, and resigned; and his Deputy Attorney General, William Ruckelshaus, also refused to do it, and Nixon fired him. So the next man down, the Solicitor General, Robert Bork, did it. It became known as "the Saturday Night Massacre."
Calls for Nixon's impeachment and removal were getting louder and more frequent. And now, the unthinkable was possible: The next President would have been of the other party. Because Nixon's Vice President, Spiro Agnew, had to resign the office due to a conviction for a tax issue. (That's the thing that always gets me: Nixon's Veep had to resign, and it had nothing to do with Watergate.)
With the Vice Presidency vacant, the next man in line was the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Carl Albert of Oklahoma, a Democrat. Nixon's choice to be the new Vice President, fellow Republican Gerald Ford, longtime Representative from Michigan, had yet to be confirmed by either house of Congress. So if Nixon got impeached and removed, or resigned, or died, Albert would have been President. (Albert was enough of a statesman to refuse to let that happen, and expedited Ford's confirmation through Congress. He was sworn in on December 6.)
And Watergate wasn't Nixon's only scandal. As with Agnew, there were questions about his income taxes. And there was a scandal involving campaign contributions from Robert Vesco, who got them to the President through his nephew, Donald Nixon. Then there was Nixon's apparent intervention in the Department of Justice's approval of the merger between ITT Corporation and Hartford Insurance.
All of this reminded people of 1952, when Nixon, then a U.S. Senator from California, was nominated for Vice President at the Republican Convention, and became the subject of a scandal over a "slush fund" that skirted the campaign finance laws of the time. It led to a half-hour TV ad bought by the Republican National Committee in which Nixon defended his financial status, admitting a gift of a dog the family named Checkers.
The speech probably saved his place on the ticket, and General Dwight D. Eisenhower stuck by him. Eisenhower would have won, anyway, but it kept Nixon as a rising star, leading to his losing a close election for President in 1960, winning a close election in 1968, and his landslide re-election in 1972.
These 1973 scandals were a lot more serious than what was alleged in 1952, and, as he had 21 years earlier, Nixon seemed to be angrier at accusations about his personal integrity than those about his conduct of the Presidency. He said:
Let me just say this, and I want to say this to the television audience: I made my mistakes, but in all of my years of public life, I have never profited, never profited from public service. I have earned every cent. And in all of my years of public life, I have never obstructed justice.
And I think, too, that I could say that in my years of public life, that I welcome this kind of examination! Because people have got to know whether or not their President is a crook! Well, I am not a crook. I've earned everything I've got!
On the video, it sounds like he's saying, "I'm not a crook!" But "I am not a crook" is how the line becomes remembered.
And, technically speaking, he wasn't a "crook." There was never enough evidence to charge him with anything in either the ITT scandal or Vesco's misdeeds. Nixon's crimes ended up being, as stated in the Articles of Impeachment that the House of Representatives drew up on July 27, 1974, "Obstruction of Justice,""Abuse of Power" and "Contempt of Congress."
No, Nixon was not a "crook," in the traditional sense of that word. He was an arch-criminal. Agnew, forced out over charges of bribery and tax evasion? He met the definition of a crook.
Nixon resigned the Presidency on August 9, 1974, because he'd been told by the Republican leaders of Congress that he could not avoid impeachment by the House and removal by the Senate. Vice President Ford became President, and pardoned Nixon for any crimes he may have committed while President.
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November 17, 1973 was a Saturday. It was a day for college football:
* Number 1 Ohio State beat Iowa, 55-13 at Ohio Stadium in Columbus.
* Number 2 Alabama beat the University of Miami, 43-13 at Denny Stadium (now named Bryant-Denny Stadium) in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.)
* Number 3 Oklahoma beat Number 18 Kansas, 48-20 at Memorial Stadium in Norman, Oklahoma. Oklahoma finished 1st in the Big Eight Conference, but were on probation, and were thus ineligible for the Conference and National Championships, and for any bowl bids.
* Number 4 Michigan beat Purdue, 34-9 at Ross-Ade Stadium in West Lafayette, Indiana. Ohio State and Michigan played each other to a tie the next Saturday, thus forging an unbreakable tie for the Big Ten title. The Conference awarded Ohio State their Rose Bowl bid, which produced a tremendous controversy.
* Number 5 Notre Dame did not play on the day. They rose to Number 3 before the bowls, due to Ohio State's tie. They beat Alabama in the Sugar Bowl, and were awarded the National Championship.
* Number 6 Penn State beat Ohio University -- definitely not Ohio State -- 49-10 at Beaver Stadium in State College, Pennsylvania. They beat Number 13 Louisiana State in the Orange Bowl, and ended the season ranked Number 5, despite having gone 12-0 and featuring the Heisman Trophy winner as the top college football player of the year, running back John Cappelletti.
It didn't help that they had a weak schedule, including all 3 service academies. Air Force finished 6-4 (including beating Arizona on November 17), but Army went 0-10 (losing to the University of Pittsburgh) and Navy went 4-7 (losing to Georgia Tech). Throw in non-conference games against MAC team Ohio, 0-10 Iowa, and 2-9 Syracuse, and it was difficult to take Joe Paterno's Nittany Lions seriously as potential National Champions.
* Number 9 USC beat Washington, 42-19 at Husky Stadium in Seattle. USC won the Pacific-Eight title, but lost to Ohio State in the Rose Bowl.
* Number 10 Nebraska beat Kansas State, 50-21 at KSU Stadium (now Snyder Family Memorial Stadium) in Manhattan, Kansas.
* Number 11 Texas beat Texas Christian, 52-7 at Memorial Stadium in Austin, Texas. Texas won the Southwest Conference title, but lost to Nebraska in the Cotton Bowl.
* In New York City, Columbia lost to Penn, 42-8 at Baker Field.
* In New Jersey, Rutgers beat Holy Cross, 27-7 at Fitton Field in Worcester, Massachusetts.
* And Princeton lost to Yale, 30-13 at Palmer Stadium in Princeton.
There were 7 games played in the NBA that day:
* The New York Knicks beat the Milwaukee Bucks, 100-93 at Madison Square Garden. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar scored 24 points for the Bucks, but Dave DeBusschere scored 26 for the Knicks.
* The Detroit Pistons beat the Buffalo Braves, 98-94 at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium.
* The Capital Bullets beat the Atlanta Hawks, 115-109 at The Omni in Atlanta. Elvin Hayes scored 43 points. (This was the former Baltimore Bullets' 1st season in the D.C. area, and they renamed themselves the Washington Bullets for the 1974-75 season, and then the Washington Wizards for 1997-98.)
* The Boston Celtics beat the Kansas City-Omaha Kings, 123-110 at the Kemper Arena in Kansas City. (It's now named the Hy-Vee Arena.)
* The Portland Trail Blazers beat the Houston Rockets, 96-87 at the Hofheinz Pavilion in Houston.
* The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Phoenix Suns, 130-110 at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix.
* And the Philadelphia 76ers beat the Golden State Warriors, 109-106 at the Oakland Coliseum Arena.
There were 5 games played in the ABA:
* The New York Nets beat the Virginia Squires, 115-97 at the Scope in Norfolk.
* The Carolina Cougars beat the Utah Stars, 125-97 at the Greensboro Coliseum.
* The Kentucky Colonels beat the Indiana Pacers, 100-96 at Freedom Hall in Louisville.
* The San Antonio Spurs beat the San Diego Conquistadors, 118-96 at the HemisFair Arena in San Antonio.
* And the Denver Rockets beat the Memphis Tams, 112-102 at the Auditorium Arena in Denver. The Rockets renamed themselves the Denver Nuggets the following season.
There were 7 games played in the NHL:
* The New York Rangers beat the Minnesota North Stars, 6-3 at the Metropolitan Sports Center in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.
* The New York Islanders lost to the St. Louis Blues, 4-0 at the Checkerdome (as the St. Louis Arena was known from 1973 to 1980).
* The Montreal Canadiens beat the Buffalo Sabres, 8-5 at the Montreal Forum.
* The Boston Bruins beat the Detroit Red Wings, 8-0 at the Boston Garden.
* The Chicago Black Hawks beat the Pittsburgh Penguins, 4-1 at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh.
* The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Los Angeles Kings, 4-3 at The Forum outside Los Angeles in Inglewood, California.
* And the Philadelphia Flyers and the Vancouver Canucks played to a tie, 2-2 at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver.
And there were 3 games played in the World Hockey Association:
* The Jersey Knights lost to the Houston Aeros, 3-2 at the Cherry Hill Arena in South Jersey.
* The Quebec Nordiques beat the New England Whalers, 10-4 at the Boston Garden.
* And the Chicago Cougars beat the Toronto Toros, 5-2 at the International Amphitheatre in Chicago.