Violence, Scandal, and the End of the Cold War 28520 , 1973. A Texan trial lawyer, Leon Jaworski, was then appointed spe-
cial prosecutor, replacing Cox.
There were now calls for Nixon’s impeachment, and the House Ju-
diciary Committee initiated an inquiry. Although a number of House
members objected to any consideration of impeachment, sixteen such
resolutions were submitted by eighty-four members for consideration
by the Judiciary Committee. With mounting public demand and the
threat of impeachment increasing, Nixon finally agreed to comply with
the subpoena and he released some of the tapes. One of them revealed
a gap of eighteen and a half minutes, which experts later decided was
caused by multiple erasures. This gap involved a conversation between
Nixon and Haldeman on June 20 , 1972.
The House Judiciary Committee of thirty-eight members, chaired
by Peter Rodino of New Jersey, began its hearings on October 30 , 1973.
Five months later a Watergate grand jury indicted seven of Nixon’s
former advisers and aides, and Judge Sirica subsequently directed that
the evidence be turned over to the Judiciary Committee. It included a
sealed report that apparently cited Nixon as a co-conspirator in the Wa-
tergate cover-up.
On April 11 , the impeachment committee voted 33 to 3 to subpoena
the tapes of conversations held in February, March, and April 1973. Five
days later Special Prosecutor Jaworski issued a subpoena for sixty-four
tapes to be used in the trials of the indicted advisers and aides. Nixon
refused, but on April 30 he released over 1 , 000 pages of edited conversa-
tions. The committee rejected his edited version of what it had asked for
and demanded the tapes. In a letter to Rodino, Nixon said he was “de-
termined to do nothing which... would render the executive branch
henceforth and forever more subservient to the legislative branch, and
would thereby destroy the constitutional balance.”
The President was certain that the Supreme Court would uphold his
opinion when Jaworski appealed to it for a decision, since he, Nixon,
had appointed nearly a majority of the justices. But on July 24 , 1974 , the
Court unanimously (with William Rehnquist abstaining) agreed in an
opinion written by Chief Justice Warren E. Burger that the President
must surrender evidence in what was obviously a criminal proceeding.
Three days later, on July 27 , 1974 , the Judiciary Committee’s articles of
impeachment were approved. Nixon was charged with having “engaged