President Nixon’s firing of several staff members who refused to follow his orders became known as the

The event was known as the Saturday Night Massacre. During the Watergate investigation, President Nixon ordered officials to dismiss special prosecutor Archibald Cox; Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus refused and resigned before Solicitor General Robert Bork carried out the order. The term refers to that series of events, not to the Watergate scandal as a whole.

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