Richardson Stands Above `Vilified' Legal World

On a windy day on Cape Cod, a middle-aged man, well-known for his other accomplishments, decided he would add windsurfing to his list of skills. As his family and a few spectators looked on, not expecting much from this novice windsurfer, Elliot L. Richardson '41 stepped on the board, grabbed the wishbone and skillfully coasted away from the shore.

But he never windsurfed again. "He wasn't interested in doing it more than once," says his son, Henry S. Richardson '77. "It was just an example of his tremendous power of will."

Since he graduated from Harvard College, Elliot Richardson, this year's Harvard Law School (HLS) Class Day speaker, has used his trademark willpower as Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts; U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare; Secretary of Defense; Attorney General of Massachusetts and later the United States; ambassador to various countries; and, on and off, as an associate or a partner in Boston and Washington law firms.

But even with such a long list of accomplishments, Richardson retains an air of humility.

"I have sometimes referred to myself as occupying four of the world's most vilified professions--I was or am a politician, a bureaucrat, a lawyer and a diplomat," Richardson says, chuckling.

But his colleagues and family say Richardson is hardly a villain.

Saturday Night Resignation

When Richardson speaks at the Law School's Class Day exercises today, it will be roughly 25 years since he resigned from his post as attorney general rather than carry out former President Richard M. Nixon's orders to fire Archibald Cox '34, the Watergate special prosecutor.

Richardson's resignation spurred his deputy, who also refused to fire Cox, to resign as well. Nixon was able to convince Solicitor General Robert Bork to fire the special prosecutor, but the series of event, which have since been labeled the "Saturday Night Massacre," increased the pressure on Nixon to resign.

Despite the weight of his decision, Richardson downplays it, saying he did not hesitate to act.

"It was a very clear-cut issue," he says. "When I got the order, I knew that I would resign."

"When the chief of staff under Nixon called me right after Cox's press conference, all I said was `Al, when can I see the president?' He knew what I meant."

For those who knew Richardson at the time, his stance was not surprising. "I don't think I ever thought that he would [not resign]," Cox says. "The president had a right to have an attorney general who would conform to his instructions; the straight, honest, responsible thing to do was to resign."

"His role in the Saturday Night Massacre was enormously important; people give me a lot of credit, but he deserves an awful lot of credit too," Cox adds.

Richardson's son, who was away rock-climbing that weekend, had a tumultuous homecoming that Monday.

"Nixon had sent in people to seal off the attorney general's office, and my father couldn't get his papers out," Henry Richardson says. "His secretary had to work out a code name so he could get his documents."

Reviewing the Law

After a long life of working with the law, Richardson says it is fundamental to the American system.

"[The American system] is a government in which literally, absolutely literally, every ounce of its power was delegated to it by the people," he says. "There is an inseparable identity of the role of law and the essentials of the American system."

And, for Richardson, the practice of law is "the most important political process" that can be performed.

"Every time you affirm the dignity and the rights of individual citizens as the central base of the whole structure [through the practice of law], then you are spelling out the ways in which individual rights are affirmed and protected," he says.

And Richardson's affinity for the law has taken him far.

But he cautions that graduates should make decisions based on their own merits, and not for the sake of where those choices may get them next.

"I have worked over 26 full-time jobs, including nine presidential appointments and two elective offices," he says, "and I never at any point thought of what I was doing as for the sake of what I might be doing next."

The Early Years

Richardson made his mark at Harvard early on in his career, graduating cum laude from both the College and the Law School, where he was president of the Harvard Law Review.

At HLS, he encountered a professor whom he would meet again--Cox, now Loeb University professor emeritus.

"I always liked him; I admired him as a student and later as another lawyer and a friend," Cox says. "He is a very warm person."

When Cox was Watergate special prosecutor, Cox says Richardson's attitude towards him was fair.

"He was never overbearing about [questioning me] or exerting any kind of pressure that I thought was improper, but he had to carry out the White House's orders," Cox says.

Respect, Richardson says, was a value ingrained in him by his experience in World War II.

As part of a regimen that landed at Normandy on D-Day, Richardson saw many fellow Americans fall to German gunfire.

"It is impossible in those circumstances to retain whatever little there was of the attitude that anybody is better, more significant, than anybody else," he says.

"If I had not already been a small-deed Democrat, that experience would have made me one," he says.

His son sees the Normandy landing in a slightly different light, pointing to it as an example of his father's spirited nature.

"He was a medic who hit the beaches on Normandy on D-Day; he got himself blown up for driving over land mines a couple of times," Henry Richardson says.

"He certainly felt very engaged and alive during that process; he didn't shrink from it," he says.

Some Work and Some Play

But Richardson has not been limited by his professional roles.

He is a father of three, a contented grandfather and an avid fly-fisher.

Ernest J. Sargent '40, a longtime friend of Richardson, describes him as having "more capability and talent than anybody I've ever seen."

However, Sargent adds, laughing, "there are certain things where he's not quite as good as you might expect--namely, he and I go fishing a lot."

But Sargent concedes that although he frequently catches more fish than Richardson, his fishing partner is "very intense about what he does."

And that intensity includes family, too.

Henry Richardson recalls the times at the family cabin on Cape Cod, where Elliot and his family would join his two brothers and their wives and children.

As the nine Richardson cousins sat around the living room, one of the brothers would read aloud from a Sherlock Holmes novel, a longtime tradition at the cabin.

But Richardson's literary interests are not confined to Conan Doyle mysteries. Sargent says he is impressed by Richardson's "very wide scope of interests; he has knowledge that is much more than the average reader's in any area."

Furthermore, Sargent says, "[Richardson's] command of the English language and his ability to write is extraordinary; it is a talent which is very significant in terms of what he does."

Richardson's secret for such success is simple.

"Do it with the whole heart and the whole mind," he says.