Ford: Nixon Friendship Affected Pardon

[DoYouEverWonder]

December 28, 2006

WASHINGTON -- Former President Gerald R. Ford acknowledged in an interview last year that his long personal friendship with Richard Nixon did indeed play a role in his decision to pardon the disgraced former president, The Washington Post reported Thursday night.

"I looked upon him as my personal friend. And I always treasured our relationship. And I had no hesitancy about granting the pardon, because I felt that we had this relationship and that I didn't want to see my real friend have the stigma," Ford told Post reporter Bob Woodward.

Ford's remarks, which he asked not be released until his death, add to the rationale for pardoning Nixon a month after he resigned as president in 1974. Ford had claimed that he issued the pardon to allow the nation to move past Watergate and begin a time of healing, not for personal reasons.

Nixon and Ford had been acquainted since the late 1940s, but the depth of their friendship was not widely known. Nixon confided in Ford and sought his help during the Watergate crisis when Ford was House minority leader, the Post reported.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-ford-nixon,0,2789807.story?coll=sns-ap-nation-headlines

So Ford put his loyalty to a friend above his loyalty to his country. Now 30 years later, we are still paying for Ford's poor judgment and decisions.

[Judi Lynn]

1. Really sad, DoYouEverWonder. Republicans just can't handle power.

They always end up believing they are simply far above the law, and too important to have to be bothered with it, and god forbid they should ever let considerations like the people of this country slow them down.

They mock us all.

[Skittles]

4. they always put the interests of the GOP above the interests of America

ALWAYS

[tanyev]

8. Laws aren't made for wealthy, powerful Republicans.

Laws are made for everybody else.

[duhneece]

17. Or is it that they don't grasp the concept of justice?

Or is it both? Republicans can't handle power and they don't grasp the concept of justice?

[Submariner]

2. What a steaming pile of cockroach excrement

Ford had claimed that he issued the pardon to allow the nation to move past Watergate and begin a time of healing, not for personal reasons.

So now he admits from the grave that he LIED about the healing BS. It was ALL about saving a friend from disgrace.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Ford, Nixon were close for decades

Dec. 28, 2006, 11:23PM
Ford, Nixon were close for decades
New transcripts of calls and letters shed light on their intense friendship

By BOB WOODWARD
Washington Post

WASHINGTON — Months before Richard Nixon set a relatively unknown Michigan congressman named Gerald Ford on the path to the White House, Nixon turned to Ford, who called himself the embattled president's "only real friend," to get him out of trouble.

During one of the darkest days of the Watergate scandal, Nixon secretly confided in Ford, at the time the House minority leader. He begged for help. He complained about fair-weather friends and swore at perceived rivals in his own party.

"Tell the guys ... (to) start fighting back," Nixon pleaded with Ford in one call secretly recorded by the president.

And Ford did. "Anytime you want me to do anything, under any circumstances, you give me a call, Mr. President," he told Nixon during that May 1, 1973, conversation. "We'll stand by you morning, noon and night."

This and other previously unpublished transcripts of their calls, documents and personal letters provide a portrait of an intensely personal friendship dating to the late 1940s but so hidden that few others were even aware of it. Until now, the relationship has been portrayed largely as a matter of political necessity, with Nixon tapping Ford for the vice presidency in late 1973 because he was a confirmable choice on Capitol Hill.
(snip/...)

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/politics/4432034.html

[acmavm]

5. So, now that the truth is coming out where are all the Ford

apologists who keep saying that this man, equally as crooked as the ones that were being thrown out of power, was good for the country?

[DoYouEverWonder]

6. Thanks to Ford

we ended up with Bush Sr, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Jim Baker pulling the strings of power for the next 30+ years.

[acmavm]

7. Exactly. Instead of in prison, or at the very least disgraced and

out of power forever, Ford made it possible for every damn one of them to make the big bloody come-back into power.

[gratuitous]

15. Well, Ford also admitted

That he feels really, really bad about it. But don't tell anybody until I'm dead and gone. Looks like when I do my tour of American presidents' graves, I should save some of the bottle from my Nixon site visit for the Ford grave-pissing.

Oh, and thanks ever so much Mr. Woodward, for honoring your promise to Ford not to publish until he died. And thanks also for your newspaper's credulous reporting over the last two years, reciting every GOP lie as if it were the gospel truth and never betraying a hint of a shadow of a doubt that not every Republican was totally on board with the Bush administration's hare-brained schemes. Really went all the way in protecting your source. Good on ya.

And special kudos to ABC last night, in their little story about Ford. They replayed the portion of the private interview where Ford said that invading Iraq was a mistake, then ran a clip of Ford stating publicly and forcefully that invading Iraq was the greatest tactical maneuver ever in the history of the world. Charles Gibson asked George Stephanopolous about the apparent contradiction, and Stephanopolous just smiled and said that politicians often said one thing in public and something totally different in private. And . . . well, that was the end of that. Okay, then. Charlie and George smiled at each other, enjoying the enormous pranking they are such willing and ongoing participants in, and the broadcast went on.

[liberal N proud]

9. Now there is something we didn't know

NOT!

[Possumpoint]

10. Okay, I Admit It

I always accepted the explanation that Nixon's pardon was granted for the good of the nation. That it assisted the nation in the transition to the post Nixon era. I was still mad at Ford for doing it and as it turned out it cost him the election.

Now to find out he did it because of friendship is a kick in the groin. I feel duped and like many others wonder what if.

[DoYouEverWonder]

11. Yep, Mr Congeniality

screwed us all. But then again, this is the same man who sat on the Warren Commission and helped cover up the truth about the Kennedy Assassination. The same man who appointed many of Poppy Bush's BCF buddies into key positions in his administration.

[crickets]

24. At the time

I was angry, disappointed and confused. I kept thinking, "That's it? We know (or we're pretty sure) he did X, Y and Z and that's it? He just goes home to San Clemente now?" I tried to buy into the "healing the nation" thing but it always bothered me.

I feel duped and like many others wonder what if.

You and me both.

Welcome to DU!

[stansnark]

12. thats why ford got nominated for vp

nixon knew he could get a pardon from him if worse came to worse

[FreeStateDemocrat]

13. The "Good old white boy system" which why the idiot is in the WH today & we're at war.

[LiberalFighter]

14. And he lied when publicly supported Bush's war

[AlCzervik]

16. Gerald Ford=The cleaner

[Zorra]

18. The myth that Ford restored integrity to the WH just ran out the back door

with its pants around its ankles.

Try to imagine a republican, any republican, "restoring integrity" to something -
:rofl:
Bwaaahaaaahaaaahaaa.

[TaleWgnDg]

19. Whether Ford admitted to a friendship w/ Nixon or not . . .

has no bearing on the outcome. And the outcome was (at that time) a great relief to, and for, the United States of America.

We were in a whirl-wind of impeachment, as well as fixated on Nixon's criminality. The country would have been bogged down for many more unnecessary months, as Ford indicated, had there been no pardon.

And, that was only the historic background of ongoing events at that time. Foreground events were the war in Vietnam.

What a hell of a mess. Impeachment and criminality at home and an unnecessary war overseas killing our soldiers. Riots in the streets at home, American combat soldiers in Vietnam on television on a nightly basis, and the country screaming for resolution -- it was a country torn apart. I remember it all, all too well.


In the early morning hours of April 30, 1975,
the last U.S. Marines evacuated the embassy roof by helicopter
as civilians poured over the embassy perimeter and swarmed onto its grounds.
Remember this photo? Civilians clamoring to get aboard the last departing
U.S. military helicopter on the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, Vietnam.



Simple put, Jerry Ford, as history will tell, did a great service to his country in pardoning Richard Milhouse Nixon on September 8, 1974, period.

Political party as some DUers, here, indicate had squat to do w/ it. Get over it.


____________________________

edited to add a link to a Wednesday, December 27, 2006, International Herald Tribune reprint of a Boston Globe, May 2001, op/ed article, Commentary: Ford's act of clemency: http://www.iht.com/bin/print.php?id=4027875

.

[DoYouEverWonder]

20. You do know that Vietnam was over

by the time Ford took office?

[daleo]

21. Mostly because a Democratic congress had cut off the money

If it had been Ford's decision, I don't doubt he would have kept throwing young men into the Viet Nam maw (just because he was a Republican). It was a Democratic congress that said "no more money".

They will have to do that again.

[crickets]

23. I'm going to have to disagree with you on this

Whether Ford admitted to a friendship w/ Nixon or not has no bearing on the outcome.

What? No, really. What? Apparently it had a great deal to do with the outcome.

And the outcome was (at that time) a great relief to, and for, the United States of America.

I wasn't relieved then, and I'm certainly not relieved now. Apparently I'm far from alone in feeling our country was ill treated by creating a special class of nonprosecutable citizens. We're still paying the price.

We were in a whirl-wind of impeachment, as well as fixated on Nixon's criminality.

This was a bad thing? I'm big on "sunshine" and consequences for wrongdoing.

The country would have been bogged down for many more unnecessary months, as Ford indicated, had there been no pardon.

I don't consider expecting anyone, much less the man holding the highest office in the land, to answer for his crimes to be "unnecessary." With great power comes great responsibility... at least it should. I think we're much more bogged down in muck now than we might be if we'd bothered to ask ALL of those who committed crimes during Watergate, including Nixon, to actually answer for them.

I feel the same way about Iran/Contra. That one is still biting the country in the ass as well.

I completely agree with a prior poster who said that wounds can't heal properly until they've been cleaned. Allowing government officials who've used their offices to commit crimes to walk away leaves a lot of dirt lying around in open wounds, wounds the entire country is having to deal with over and over again until they're properly taken care of.

Get over it.

Respectfully, no.

[mitchum]

22. Cover Up Jerry will soon be covered up himself