This action challenges the legality of the attempts by

the defendant to discharge Archibald Cox as the Special Watergate Prosecutor and to disband the Office of the Watergate 1

Special Prosecution Force. Plaintiffs are all citizens, taxpayers, and attorneys; in addition, plaintiff Moss is a United States Senator, and plaintiffs Waldie and Abzug are Members of the House of Representatives. The complaint prays for declaratory and injunctive relief against the defendant, and this memorandum is submitted in support of plaintiffs' motion under

1

Submitted simultaneously with this motion is a motion for leave to amend the complaint and add additional parties. This amended complaint raises no new issues, and most of the changes simply reflect the addition of the new parties and the changes in circumstances that have occurred since the original complaint was prepared. For the convenience of defendant and the Court, we will refer to the amended complaint in this memorandum in lieu of the original complaint and include facts and arguments related to the parties in the amended complaint.

Rule 65(a)(1) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure for a
Because of the extraordinary public

preliminary injunction.

interest in having this matter resolved at the earliest possible

time, plaintiffs ask this Court to consolidate the hearing on the motion for the preliminary injunction with a final hearing, as authorized by Rule 65(a)(2).

In a nutshell, the facts of this case are as follows:

--In May 1973, Elliot Richardson was confirmed by the Senate to be Attorney General after he had, with the authorization of the President, worked out a detailed agreement with the Judiciary Committee concerning the appointment of a special prosecutor to conduct the socalled "Watergate" investigation and prosecutions;

--Immediately after his confirmation, Attorney General
Richardson formally appointed Archibald Cox to be
Special Prosecutor and promulgated departmental regu-
lations establishing the Office of Watergate Special
Prosecution Force and embodying explicit rules governing
its conduct which were identical to the terms agreed
upon during his confirmation hearings;

--These detailed regulations authorized the Special
Prosecutor to challenge claims of executive privilege
in court actions, declared that he could only be dis-
missed for committing "extraordinary improprieties",
and provided that the office would continue to perform
its functions until its job was completed or until
another time agreed upon by the Special Prosecutor
and the Attorney General;

--Despite these binding regulations, defendant, who
became Acting Attorney General after the forced resig-
nations of the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney
General, purportedly fired Special Prosecutor Cox
and abolished his office when Cox declined to accede to
a Presidentially proposed "compromise" of a court action
concerning access to tapes and other memoranda of
Presidential conversations, or to comply with a Presi-
dential directive not to make any attempts through
future judicial proceedings to obtain similar materials.

The complaint alleges that two separate actions of the defendant were unlawful. The first of these, the defendant's

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there was then in existence a validly promulgated regulation of the Department of Justice which permitted the firing of Mr. Cox only for "extraordinary improprieties on his part", and there are conceded to be none in this case.

Moreover,

because of defendant's limited authority as an Acting Attorney General, he lacked the power to discharge the Special Prosecutor. The second action of the defendant claimed to have been illegal is the abolition of the Office of the Special Prosecutor. Plaintiffs contend that this order is unlawful since the regulation which created the Office specifically provides for its continuation until the Special Prosecutor determines that his work is concluded or until a date mutually agreed upon between the Attorney General and himself. Moreover, the attempted abolition was invalid because the defendant, as a Solicitor General who has become Acting Attorney General, has no authority to effect wholesale changes in the organizational structure of the Department of Justice. Further, plaintiffs argue that the special circumstances surrounding the appointment of Mr. Cox and the creation of his office, also act to preclude a Solicitor General who becomes Acting Attorney General from making a drastic change of this kind. Finally, in this connection, defendant's decision to abolish the Office was unlawful because

it was made without any independent rational basis and was undertaken solely because of the direction by the President. Since the defendant would have been fired from his job unless he agreed to both fire Mr. Cox and abolish the Office, his decision to do so was unlawfully coerced and cannot be sustained.

This action challenges the legality of the attempts by

the defendant to discharge Archibald Cox as the Special Watergate Prosecutor and to disband the Office of the Watergate 1

Special Prosecution Force. Plaintiffs are all citizens, taxpayers, and attorneys; in addition, plaintiff Moss is a United States Senator, and plaintiffs Waldie and Abzug are Members of the House of Representatives. The complaint prays for declaratory and injunctive relief against the defendant, and this memorandum is submitted in support of plaintiffs' motion under

1

Submitted simultaneously with this motion is a motion for leave to amend the complaint and add additional parties. This amended complaint raises no new issues, and most of the changes simply reflect the addition of the new parties and the changes in circumstances that have occurred since the original complaint was prepared. For the convenience of defendant and the Court, we will refer to the amended complaint in this memorandum in lieu of the original complaint and include facts and arguments related to the parties in the amended complaint.