http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/27/1645231
Wednesday, December 27th, 2006
Investigative Journalist Robert Parry on Gerald Ford's Legacy and the
Bush Administration's Roots in the Ford White House
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Journalist Robert Parry talks about Gerald Ford's role in ending the
Watergate era, his moves to limit Congressional and media oversight on
executive power, and the roots of Bush administration in the Ford White
House. [rush transcript included]
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Gerald Ford granted Richard Nixon a full and absolute pardon for all
federal crimes that he committed when he was in the White House - including
for crimes connected to the Watergate scandal. The decision stunned the
country. Ford surrounded himself by advisers who would later play key roles
in the current Bush administration and in shaping Bush's Iraq war policy.
Donald Rumsfeld served first as his chief of staff and then as Secretary of
Defense. Dick Cheney also served as Ford's chief of staff. Paul Wolfowitz
served in the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.
a.. Robert Parry. Veteran Investigative Journalist; author,"Secrecy
& Privilege".
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AMY GOODMAN: : As we turn now to the issue of Vietnam and Watergate.
Yes, President Ford is dead at the age of 93. And President Ford died last
night. He became president in 1974 following the resignation of Richard
Nixon. The only person to become president who was never elected president
or vice president. Some described him as the accidental president. We
are--many people are talking about President Ford, the statement of
President Bush is "President Ford was a great American who gave many years
of dedicated service to our country on August 9, 1974, after a long career
in the House of Representatives and service as Vice President, he assumed
the Presidency in an hour of national turmoil and division." President Bush
went on to say "with his quiet integrity, common sense, and kind instincts,
President Ford helped heal our land and restore public confidence in the
presidency. The American people will always admire Gerald Ford's devotion to
duty, his personal character and the honorable conduct of his
administration. We mourn the loss of such a leader, and our 38th president
will always have a special place in our nation's memory. On behalf of all
Americans, Laura and I offer our deepest sympathies to Betty Ford and all
President Ford's family. Our thoughts and prayers will be with them in the
hours and days ahead". That, again, the statement of President Bush upon the
death of President Ford.
We turn now to Robert Parry, who is a veteran investigative
journalist, author of Secrecy and Privilege. Robert Parry, can you talk
about the significance of the role of President Ford in history?
ROBERT PARRY: : Well, I think Gerald Ford gets a lot of credit because
of when he became President and the extraordinary circumstances, in which he
became President. He was, of course, the person who followed Richard Nixon,
and brought, in a sense, the end to the national nightmare of Watergate. In
another sense however, he also marks the beginning of the counter-attack, if
you will, against the efforts by Congress, the Press and other Americans to
reign in the Imperial Presidency.
You start seeing already, in the early days of the Ford
Administration, an effort to strike back against those efforts to limit the
Executive Power. We have efforts in the CIA, when he brings in George H.W.
Bush, to push back against Congressional oversight. To allow more space for
the CIA to operate, to fight against efforts to expose some of the more
corrupt CIA actions. And oddly, because of the timing of Ford's Presidency,
that it sort of came after the period, the Church Commission looked at, in
terms of CIA abuses, and it came before the beginning of the formal
congressional oversight process, the CIA operated during that year with a
great deal of freedom. And we know -- we don't know enough about some of the
things that were done during that period.
So I think while Ford gets a great deal of credit, because he helped
mend the nation's wounds over Watergate, it wasn't entirely this pleasant
experience that some people are making it out to be. It was, in a sense, the
incubator for the resurgence of the Imperial Presidency. People like Donald
Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney were in the Ford White House, and many of their
feelings about re-establishing that Imperial Presidency have lived to this
day.
AMY GOODMAN: : Talk more about this critical period, and the coming
together of Cheney and Rumsfeld, when they came together for the first time
with Ford. And also about what the pardon meant. Those who said that the
country just had to move on. Many feel it's the reason why Ford lost to
Carter. It would have been the only time he was elected to federal office,
if he had actually become president as a result of an election as opposed to
being chosen by the president as vice-president then taking over as
president when Nixon left.
ROBERT PARRY: : Well, clearly the pardon of Richard Nixon was a
politically understandable step. But again, it cut off some of the
investigative efforts to really fully understand what happened during that
period of Nixon's presidency. There's always been this balance in Washington
where there seems to be this obsession with moving on, and sometimes that
leaves the American people without the full understanding of the facts of
the situation. And therefore, some of the problems can re-emerge years down
the road, as we've seen in this resurrection of the Imperial Presidency in
the past 6 years. So I would think that was, some of the lessons learned by
Cheney and Rumsfeld in the Ford White House were the need to fight for those
executive powers in ways that were sometimes surreptitious as well as more
open.
We saw at the CIA, for instance, during that period, the CIA Director,
George H.W. Bush attempt to conduct a number of CIA operations with the same
kind of arrogance and secrecy that had covered previous ones. The main point
during that period was to get the CIA off the front pages, as Bush once put
it. So when you had events like the Argentine military coup which set in
motion the so-called Dirty War and led to some 30,000 deaths, that occurred
during that period. And we still don't know the full involvement of the U.S.
government in that.
The assassination of Orlando Letelier, the Chilean foreign minister,
and his American co-worker, Ronni Moffitt occurred in September of 1976. And
again, the impetus was not to find the truth, but to protect both the
Pinochet government and the CIA from any fallout that might have occurred.
Again, the timing of those things that are important because Ford was trying
to win that election in November. So if one overlays the political calendar
to the effort to misdirect investigators on the Letelier assassination, one
sees the effort to keep the CIA from having negative press and therefore
hurting Ford's chances. So again you see this idea of protecting the
presidency from negative information. And that whole approach of keeping the
American people in the dark is something that the Ford White House, in a
sense, put back in motion after Watergate. And I think the pardon was part
of that.
AMY GOODMAN: : Bob Parry, I want to thank you very much for being with
us. Bob Parry is an investigative journalist. He's written the book Secrecy
and Privilege. His website is: consortiumnews.com. When we come back from
break we will be joined by the publisher of The Nation magazine, Victor
Navasky, about a very interesting court case that involved The Nation, and
yes, former President Ford. Again, the latest news, President Ford is dead
at the age of 93. This is Democracy Now! democracynow.org. We'll be back in
a minute.
***
Wednesday, December 27th, 2006
Did Gerald Ford Agree to Nixon Pardon Before Taking Office? The
Nation's Victor Navasky on Ford's Memoirs and the Lawsuit that Followed
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In the late 1970s, the Nation magazine published excerpts of Gerald
Ford's memoirs in which he revealed the idea of pardoning Richard Nixon was
raised with him before Ford replaced Nixon in the White House. The Nation
magazine publisher emeritus Victor Navasky talks about Ford's account and
the landmark lawsuit that ensued. [rush transcript included]
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Victor Navasky. Publisher Emeritus of the Nation Magazine and chairman
of the Columbia University Journalism review.
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RUSH TRANSCRIPT
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AMY GOODMAN: The war and peace report, I'm Amy Goodman. President Ford
is dead at the age of 93. We are talking to a number of people about his
legacy. There's an interesting piece in the Associated Press today, an
article that says that President Nixon and Watergate were not the only time
President Ford wrestled with the issue of impeachment. The AP says that in
April of 1970, at the request of White House aide, John Ehrlichman, Ford led
an effort by more than 100 house members to impeach Supreme Court Justice
William O. Douglass. The efforts stem from the Senate's rejection of two
Nixon nominees to the court, Clement Haynesworth Jr. and G. Harold Carswell.
In a now famous speech on the house floor, Ford told his colleagues that "an
impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives
considers it to be at a given moment in history."
Ford based his case on Douglass' association with a foundation built
partly on gambling money and the appearance of some of the eccentric
justices' writings in an issue of Evergreen Review magazine in which nude
photographs also appeared. The Evergreen charger and forward the mocking of
democrats, of course, William O. Douglass was not impeached.
But we're going to turn now to another issue. We have Victor Navasky
on the line with us. He's publisher emeritus of The Nation magazine, Chair
of the Columbia University Journalism Review, and this is a case that
involved The Nation magazine and former President Ford. Welcome to Democracy
Now!, Victor Navasky.
VICTOR NAVASKY: Good to be here Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about this case?
VICTOR NAVASKY: Sure. Let's see, in August of 1974, which was about a
week before Nixon resigned, General Hague took Gerry Ford for a walk in the
rose garden, and told him that Nixon was going bonkers and they had to get
him out of there, and there were four possible ways to do that. The first
three turned out to not realistic. But the fourth, he said, was if you would
promise to pardon him after you become president, I think he would agree to
resign.
Now, some years later Ford wrote about this in his memoir. And,
someone, and his memoirs were being kept secret as they had sold publication
rights and he had signed a contract saying he wouldn't talk about it until
the book came out. And someone who had access to it asked me if I wanted to
read it. And, I said not particularly, but I would, and it turned out that
there was this one chapter that dealt with this conversation. And, the way
Ford told the story, he put a gloss of innocence on it, and I'll tell you
what he said in a minute. But, we ran a story about the story, and
subsequently we were sued by the publisher and it went all the way up to the
Supreme Court, and here's what happened.
After Hague took Ford for a walk in the rose garden, Ford writes in
his memoir that he came back to his office, and he mentioned this to an aide
of his named, Bob Hartman, and the aide said, and then what did you say
after you heard that? And, Ford said well, I didn't say anything. And, the
aide said, gee, that's not good, silence implies assent. Because Ford had
asked Hague well, is it possible to pardon someone before he is indicted?
And Hague said yes, we checked it out with our lawyers and it is. So Ford
says, he then went to sleep and he didn't say anything to Betty about it and
the next morning he got up and he mentioned it to another aide, a fellow
named Jack Marsh. And Marsh said, and then what did you say? And, Ford said,
I didn't say anything, and this aide said, gee, that could be a time bomb.
So, Ford then writes, that he then went and called General Hague and
read him a statement, which he reprints in his book, and the statement said,
nothing I did or didn't say yesterday should be taken to mean that I did or
didn't agree to pardon or not to pardon Richard Nixon. And, he writes it as
a kind of proforma thing, and the way I read it was it was a an attempt to
put a gloss of innocence on a deal they had made. And this is a possible
obstruction of justice, and that it's something that he shouldn't have done
and against the law, and possibly, after he got nominated and confirmed, an
impeachable offense, even.
In any event, we wrote the story and the--about a week or a couple of
days later, I got a call from Herb Mitgang who was a reporter for The New
York Times, saying, what's your response to the telegram Harper sent you? I
said what telegram? And they had sent it to The New York Times, but our copy
didn't arrive until a day later. Threatening a lawsuit and telling us to
cease and desist excerpting from the Ford memoirs, which of course we hadn't
done. Well the fact was, what had happened was, Time, which had agreed to
excerpt from the book, canceled its excerpts because-cancelled its excerpts,
because, the deal was that Ford wasn't - nothing was supposed to come out-
about this conversation about the pardon until after they had run their
story.
And we, of course, believed that the right of a public figure to keep
his secrets while in office is fine, if he keeps them, and he certainly or
she should be encouraged to write their memoirs so that the public gets the
benefit of their thoughts about what happened. But, they have no right to
copyright the news. They have no right-they have the right to protect their
style, and of course The Nation wasn't interested in borrowing Ford's style.
The reason that we quoted from his memoirs was only so that we couldn't be
accused of distorting what he had to say, but the guy had written a book
that ran about 110,000 words and we had quoted about 350 words. We quoted
some others things which were very clearly public documents, but we also
quoted correspondence and stuff that was part of the public's business.
And the case, it was a very interesting case because, Ford himself,
chose not to be a plaintiff. The plaintiffs were Time, Inc., the Harper and
Rowe and Readers Digest, which also had excerpts involved in the thing. And
the amount of money at stake was only Time Inc.'s share of the $25,000 that
was an issue, so it was $12,500, which barely qualified for a federal
lawsuit. It went all the way up to the Supreme Court, and at the trial
level, the Judge, a fellow named Richard Owen, was--had been a Nixon
appointee, and he was a famous copyright protectionist Judge and he decided
for Ford.
At the appeals level, the Judge was Kaufman, who had been the judge
that sentenced the Rosenbergs to death, but Kaufman, about which The Nation
had been very critical, but Kaufman, Irving Kaufman, was also a first
amendment absolutist and a democrat, and he decided in The Nation's favor.
And then the thing went on appeal to the Supreme Court and then it was very
interesting, because then the Supreme Court ultimately, where we were
defended by Floyd Abrams, a first amendment lawyer and the ACLU, and The New
York Times, and the New York Review of Books, and a bunch of other
periodicals came to our defense.
But, to make it brief, the Supreme Court decided 6:3 against us and
the decision was rendered by Sandra Day O'Connor, who these days is
celebrated as, you know, a fair-minded balancer, etc., but she was a
republican appointee. And the fact was, and Byron was a right, and voted on
our side. So it was weirdly a playing out of the realist critique of
jurisprudence where the democrats were voting one way and the republicans
the other. And the--in Justice O'Conner's decision, she actually misstated
some of the facts of the case. It was one of the technical things that is
bedeviling to me is when a case is decided against you, but they get the
facts wrong at the Supreme Court level, how do you get that corrected?
Because there is no appeal at the Supreme Court. Anyway, that's what
happened with this sort of sideline of this Gerry Ford case.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Victor Navasky, your thoughts today on President
Ford's legacy.
VICTOR NAVASKY: Well, I think he--the most important thing he did was
he pardoned Richard Nixon. And he--if that was, indeed, the result of a
deal, rather than this he's being credited, and maybe properly so, with
trying to heal the nation. But, if he--his attempt to heal the nation was a
result of a deal he made while he was Vice President of the United States,
that's an important missing piece of history. So he'll be celebrated because
he's a nice guy and he was a football player and all of that stuff for the
next week or two. But if it turns out that this deal was made then history
is going to have a harsher judgment about him.
AMY GOODMAN: And, the fact that he also, not only pardoned Richard
Nixon, but granted amnesty to draft era resisters, the significance of that.
VICTOR NAVASKY: Well, I think you have to credit him for that. Time
passes, and he was--he was in the healing business, on the one hand. On the
other hand, what you mentioned earlier in the program about his attempt to
impeach Justice Douglass for publishing in the Evergreen Review, which was
an experimental, sort of hippie, avant-garde, very good, and serious
literary magazine, was outrageous. And so he's a complicated guy who came
across as a nice guy.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you, very much, Victor Navasky,
Publisher Emeritus of The Nation magazine, Chair of the Columbia University
Journalism Review, for joining us today.
VICTOR NAVASKY: Thank you Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: Thank you for being with us.
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LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network
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