Despite his close personal ties to many of the career officers in the Justice Department, formed during his four years as U.S. Solicitor General under Presidents John F. Kennedy '40 and Lyndon B. Johnson, Cox apparently feels that reliance on present government employees may prejudice his handling of the case.

Cox also said in the interview on May 19, the day after his appointment was announced, that he was reserving the right to review all the pertinent government data already compiled by the three assistant attorney generals before deciding how to proceed with the case.

Cox's colleagues and students verify that he is nothing if not independent. "He's a tough, independent-minded man," one said, adding that Cox liked to keep his decisions to himself. One of Cox's present students commented that he "could be a bastard in a classroom with someone who isn't answering the question," a talent he could be called on to demonstrate in dealing with recalcitrant Watergate witnesses.

A tight-lipped, soft-spoken man by nature, Cox's relation with the press, crucial to the maintenance of his credibility, may suffer from his vaunted reticence. Cox spent most of the day of his appointment dodging reporters until he could be unveiled at a 5 p.m. press conference, and even then his only comment on the scandal he has been assigned to unravel was that "it seems very, very big."

Unravelling the tangled web of Watergate will require all the energy that Cox can muster. He expects the investigation to take at least a year or more and points out that the inquiry into Teapot Dome consumed six years of study.

Whether in rumpled, professorial grey suit and Dunlopesque bow tie before a Law School class, in morning coat and striped pants before the Supreme Court, or in dungarees and sweater in the garden of his suburban home in Wayland, 20 miles west of Boston, Cox combines youthful energy with the deliberateness of the scholar suggested by the half-moon glasses that perch on the tip of his nose.

Cox once wrote, in fact, that his greatest conviction was concurrence with Ezra Thayer in the view that "the central tragedy of life is that there are only 24 hours in the day." On the other hand, Cox, who will be moving to Washington with his wife, Phyllis, for the year, has found limits to his capacity. "For a time I guess I'll be doing some coming back and forth," Cox sighs and then flashes his easy grin. "But I'm no Dean Dunlop--I haven't got his capacity to sit up all night on airplanes."