Video: 'The Presidents: Nixon' (Oct. 19, 1973, at 2:25:26)

(Friday, October 19, 1973, evening; during the Watergate scandal) — U.S. President Richard Nixon refused tonight to turn over Watergate related tapes to special prosecutor Archibald Cox but said that, “with greatest reluctance,” he would prepare a summary of their content to be verified by Sen. John Stennis, a Democrat from Mississippi.

Nixon said he has felt it necessary to direct Cox “as an employee of the executive branch to make no further attempts by the judicial process to obtain tapes, notes or memoranda of presidential conversations” and that it was understood that Nixon would be prepared to fire Cox if he sought to circumvent the arrangement proposed to him.