page_title: William Ruckelshaus
section_title: 2000s and 2010s
hierarchical_section_title: William Ruckelshaus / Subsequent career / 2000s and 2010s
caption_attribution_description: English: Office of the Administrator (Lisa P. Jackson) - 40th Anniversary Speakers Series, William Ruckelshaus [412-APD-583-2010-04-15_SpeakersSeries_063.jpg], 4/15/2010
context_page_description: William Doyle Ruckelshaus was an American attorney and government official.
  Ruckelshaus was the first Administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency from 1970 to 1973. He subsequently served as acting Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and then as U.S. Deputy Attorney General. In October 1973, in what became known as the "Saturday Night Massacre", Ruckelshaus, along with U.S. Attorney General Elliot Richardson, resigned from their positions rather than obey the order of President Richard Nixon to fire the independent special prosecutor Archibald Cox, tasked with investigating Nixon's role in the Watergate scandal. Ruckelshaus later returned as EPA Administrator from 1983 to 1985.
context_section_description: Ruckelshaus was appointed by President George W. Bush to serve on the United States Commission on Ocean Policy, which submitted its Final Report to the President and Congress, An Ocean Blueprint for the 21st Century, in 2004.
  In June 2010, Ruckelshaus became co-chair of the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative.
  Ruckelshaus served as a director on boards of several corporations, including Isilon Systems, Monsanto, Cummins, Pharmacia, Solutia, Coinstar, Nordstrom, Pfizer, and Weyerhaeuser.
  He was Chair of the Advisory Board of The William D. Ruckelshaus Center at the University of Washington and Washington State University, Chair Emeritus of the University of Wyoming's Ruckelshaus Institute for Environment and Natural Resources, Chairman Emeritus of the World Resources Institute, and Chair of the Meridian Institute. He was a director of the Initiative for Global Development.
  In 2008, Ruckelshaus endorsed Barack Obama in the 2008 election for President of the United States. In August 2016, Ruckelshaus and another former Republican-appointed EPA administrator, William K. Reilly, jointly endorsed Hillary Clinton for president in the 2016 election. 
  In 2008, Ruckelshaus was appointed to the Washington State Puget Sound Partnership, an agency devoted to cleaning up Puget Sound. In early 2012, Ruckelshaus was appointed co-chair of the Washington Blue Ribbon Panel on ocean acidification.
  In August 2018, Ruckelshaus drew parallels to the actions of President Donald Trump's administration relating to special prosecutor Robert Mueller and Ruckelshaus's own experiences during the Massacre and with President Nixon's "disrespect for the rule of law" in an opinion-editorial in The Washington Post.
caption: Ruckelshaus speaks in 2010 at an EPA event celebrating the agency's 40th anniversary.
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