Thirty years ago on Monday - Oct. 20, 1973--
it was announced that Nixon had ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson, and then-deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus, to fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox. They had both refused and resigned in protest. Nixon didn't realize that the top two men who worked for him at the Department of Justice would refuse to carry out his orders.
"It was fairly obvious to me that what the president was doing was fundamentally wrong, and therefore asking me to act as the instrument of what I saw as something unconscionable was something I was unwilling to do," said Ruckelshaus in an October 1999 ABC News Interview.
Nixon then made his Solicitor General, Robert Bork, the new attorney general, and Bork carried out Nixon's order to fire Cox.
Greg Theilman on Sixty Minutes II earlier this week verified what eveyone at this point knew to be true. That Powell's speech at the UN On Feb. 5, 2003 was a lie and that Powell knew it was a lie when he gave it. We all knew that, simply because Powel had to know, given his high level position. We all know that the administration knew the Niger story was false. And Powell, after all, did refuse to use it. But Powell did repeat the aluminum tube story as fact. Powell said: "Saddam Hussein is determined to get his hands on a nuclear bomb. He is so determined that he has made repeated covert attempts to acquire high-specification aluminum tubes from 11 different countries even after inspections resumed."
"I had a couple of initial reactions. Then I had a more mature reaction," says Thielmann, commenting on Powell's presentation to the United Nations.
"I think my conclusion now is that it's probably one of the low points in his long, distinguished service to the nation."
Powell could have refused to carry out his orders, he could have chosen the path of Elliot Richardson and William Ruckelshaus. He could have remembered the oath he took was to the constitution of the United States and not the president. Instead his loyalty was to his president and not his country and he followed Robert Bork's example. We all have choices in this life to make, Colin Powell has made his, and history will judge him.