On Oct. 20, 1973 - 16 months and three days after five men with ties to the White House were arrested for breaking into the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington - President Nixon had Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor investigating the Watergate scandal, fired after Mr. Cox had subpoenaed secret presidential tapes.

In what became known as "the Saturday Night Massacre," the president ordered Elliot L. Richardson, his attorney general, to fire Mr. Cox, but Mr. Richardson resigned rather than carry out the instruction. When William D. Ruckelshaus, who was Mr. Richardson's deputy at the Justice Department, was given the same command, he, too, resigned.

Robert H. Bork was then named acting attorney general, and he carried out the president's wishes.

Mr. Rodino, a 64-year-old representative from New Jersey with a voice like Gene Kelly's, had been chairman of the House Judiciary Committee for only nine months. For 26 years, he had been a stalwart of the Essex County Democratic organization, an unassuming congressman who had quietly won 13 consecutive elections, thriving in a constituency in Newark that had gone from being an Italian and Portuguese enclave to one in which black residents had gained the balance of power.

He had compiled a liberal voting record, and pushed hard for civil rights and immigration reform. But he was hardly known outside his district, and his elevation as chairman had resulted not from merit but from congressional seniority rules. His best-known piece of legislation was the bill that had made Columbus Day a national holiday.

When Congress reconvened after the Veterans Day weekend that followed the "massacre," the word "impeachment" was being uttered with the utmost seriousness....

In the fall of 1973, the country was sharply divided over President Nixon's role in the scandals. It was by no means certain that anyone in Washington could steer an impeachment inquiry safely past the hazards of partisan politics. Grave doubts were raised over Mr. Rodino's qualifications, even within his own party.

Carl Albert, the Democratic speaker of the House, suggested that instead of Mr. Rodino's Judiciary Committee, the House should form a select, high-powered committee of prominent members to take up the impeachment inquiry.

Mr. Rodino flatly opposed that idea, and Thomas P. O'Neill, the Democratic majority leader, gave him his support, though he, too, was not free of doubt....

As the country was soon to learn, Mr. Rodino's way meant great patience, caution, enormous energy, and fairness above all. In his first major decision he chose as the committee's special counsel John Doar, the former civil rights troubleshooter for the Justice Department who 10 years earlier had nudged Gov. George Wallace out of a schoolhouse door where he had been blocking the enrollment of black students in Alabama.

They formed a powerful team: Mr. Rodino, a short, streetwise Democrat, a child of immigrants who had gone to law school at night, and Mr. Doar, a rangy, laconic Republican from Wisconsin who had gone to Princeton and served two presidents, Eisenhower and Kennedy. They soon hired 105 staff members, among them a 26-year-old lawyer named Hillary Rodham.

Mr. Rodino set a brutal tempo, rising at 6:30 in the morning and working until 2 in the morning. By February, exhaustion forced him into Bethesda Naval Hospital for six days.

He pored over the already enormous Watergate record. Three times over he read a history of the impeachment and trial of Andrew Johnson, and he studied the writings of Edmund Burke, the 18th-century English conservative who had urged that any process of impeachment should rest "not upon the niceties of a narrow jurisprudence, but upon the enlarged and solid principles of state morality."

On May 9, 1974, when the hearings began, he was ready. Including the chairman, there were 21 Democrats and 17 Republicans on the committee. From the beginning, Mr. Rodino recalled, he had seen his role as teacher, negotiator, leader and symbol. He urged the members to refrain from grandstanding, but only rarely did he gavel anyone into silence.

"I know we're sometimes weak-kneed, and sometimes political," he said of the committee. "But I really believe this is an instance when we can demonstrate that the system does work."

On July 24, as the nation gathered around television sets to watch the committee's final deliberations, the critical question was whether enough Republican members would favor impeachment to parry the White House's charges of partisanship.

The first article of impeachment charged President Nixon with forms of obstructing justice by including such acts as making false statements, withholding evidence, condoning the counseling of witnesses, approving payments to witnesses, and trying to misuse the Central Intelligence Agency. It was passed by a bipartisan vote of 27 to 11, with six Republicans favoring impeachment.

A second article, recommending impeachment for abuse of power, specified such charges as attempting to initiate tax audits for political purposes, ordering and misusing secret wiretaps, and permitting the operation of a White House unit engaged in covert and unlawful activities. It was approved by a bipartisan vote of 28 to 10, with seven Republicans joining in the majority.

A third article, charging that the president had sought to impede due process by refusing to comply with subpoenas from the committee that sought tapes of White House conversations, was approved, but only on party lines. Two other articles, one charging the president with usurping the war powers of Congress by secretly bombing Cambodia, and the other questioning his claims of tax deductions and compensation for maintenance of his private estates, were both defeated by 26-12 margins. Mr. Rodino voted yes on all but the article involving tax and expense claims.

Three days after the voting ended, on Aug. 5, President Nixon admitted that more than two years earlier, on June 17, 1972, he had ordered a halt in an F.B.I. investigation of the break-in of Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate and that he had kept this secret from investigating bodies, his own counsel and the public. Though he said these facts did not justify the extreme step of impeachment, the disclosure led the 10 Republican members of Mr. Rodino's committee who had voted against the first three recommendations for impeachment to announce that they would reverse themselves, in effect making the decision to move toward impeachment unanimous.

After being advised of this, President Nixon, on the evening of Aug 8, 1974, told a television audience of some 130 million people that he was resigning effective the next day.

"It has been an ordeal - for President Nixon and for all our people," Mr. Rodino said in a statement. "I know it was necessary. I believe our laws and our system will be stronger for it. I hope we will all be better for it. These past months have been the most solemn of our lives."