Archie Cox Goes To Washington

The Nixon Administration turned to Harvard once again last week to fill another spot in the ailing executive branch.

Elliot L. Richardson '41, Nixon's attorney general-designate (now confirmed), chose Archibald Cox '34, to head the Justice Department's investigation into the Watergate scandal.

Cox, who was one of Richardson's professors at the Law School when he attended it in the forties, was the third man whom Richardson had asked to accept the post.

Richardson's first two choices, Federal District Judge Harold R. Tyler of New York and Los Angeles attorney Warren M. Christopher, had turned down the job because they felt that the Justice Department would not offer them enough independence.

Under Richardson's guidelines, Cox will have a high degree of independence, but the extent of this independence will have to be "consistent with the attorney general's statutory accountability for all matters falling within the Department of Justice."

Cox, a registered Democrat who voted for George McGovern in the 1972 presidential election, said at a hurriedly-assembled Holyoke Center news conference last Friday that he had accepted the job because "somehow we must restore confidence in the honor, integrity and decency of government and this is a major part of that important task."

Cox said that he is totally satisfied with the guidelines Richardson put forth the day before his appointment. "I think the guidelines leave complete room for independence and I haven't the slightest doubt I will be independent," he said.