Gerald Ford: Political Whore For the FBI?
Joseph C. Hinson
Tuesday August 8, 2000
You have no doubt heard by now that 87 year old former president Gerald Ford is in the hospital after suffering from at least one mild stroke last week at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia. While I wish the man a full and speedy recovery, it is interesting to note that no one is really talking about him. They just mention the details I put in my first sentence. Let us go back a little and look closer at the only man to ever hold the office of the presidency without being elected to it.
Are you aware that he was also not elected vice-president? Richard Nixon appointed him to that position after his original VP, Spiro Agnew, had to resign to avoid going to jail for income tax evasion. This was in 1973 after the Nixon/Agnew team won re-election. And then in August of 1974, 26 years ago to the day, Richard Nixon himself resigned to avoid impeachment for the cover-up of the Watergate break-in. Ford was thus the new president of the United States. One of the first actions he took while holding that office was to pardon Trick Dick for any crimes he may (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) have committed while in office. Anyone who did not see that coming must have had their head up their ass. And anyone who doesn't think the pardon of Nixon was to pay him back for making Ford the vice-president is frankly a moron.
But it was while on the Warren Commission that Ford had his finest hour. Ford was one of seven "men of honor" hand picked by Lyndon Johnson to arrive at the truth concerning the murder of John Kennedy. J. Edgar Hoover had reasons to want the Commission to find that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone in the assassination, in spite of ample evidence to the contrary. Ford was friendly to Hoover during this period.
In his book Act of Treason: The Role of J. Edgar Hoover in the Assassination of President Kennedy, Mark North writes, "Assistant FBI Director (William) Sullivan will later state, 'Hoover was delighted when Ford was named to the Warren Commission. The Director wrote in one of his internal memos that the bureau could expect Ford to 'look after FBI interests,' and he did, keeping us fully advised on what was going on behind closed doors. He was our... informant on the Warren Commission."
On December 12, 1963, in a memo to Hoover, Special Agent Carla DeLoach reports on meeting with Ford. '"He asked that I come up to see him... Upon arriving he told me he wanted to talk in the strictest of confidence. This was agreed to."' Ford again indicated he would keep the FBI 'thoroughly advised as to the activities of the Commission.
Ford apparently discussed that he, former CIA head Allen Dulles and Congressman Hale Boggs, both also on the Commission, had successfully opposed Earl Warren's choice for General Counsel. He states that he is "disturbed about he manner in which Chief Justice Warren is carrying on his chairmanship of the Presidential Commission. Ford is fundamentally at odds with Warren from the outset, presumably believing he is trying to deflect attention away from Oswald as lone assassin.
It is also know that Ford met privately with Lyndon Johnson during his time on the Commission.
Ford, then a Representative, later wrote a book on the JFK assassination, Portrait of the Assassin, using material that Earl Warren had ordered be kept from the public for 75 years. He suffered no repercussions for this action. Afterall, the book was a further indictment against Lee Oswald, a man who could not defend himself against this book or the charges within it since he was dead. In the years since the Commission wrapped up it's (for lack of a better term) flawed investigation, Jerry Ford has been one of it's most vocal defenders. "Never before has a crime been so thoroughly investigated," Ford wrote in his book.
At the very least, the future president was acting in bad faith, already having an opinion as to whether a conspiracy had been involved in the death of Kennedy before the Warren Commission even met for the first time. At worst, he seeked to cover up the fact that Oswald did not act alone. And he knew this from the start.
Ford's tenure as president was marked by two separate assassination attempts just seventeen days apart. Aside from that, apparently, the man stumbled around the Oval Office a lot. This spawned the classic "Saturday Night Live" sketches by Chevy Chase. In August of 74, Ford was called home by his advisors and told to stop his "Nixon is innocent" world tour. The smoking gun had been found and Nixon was about to resign.
During a 1976 debate with a peanut farmer on national television,
President Ford assured the American people that Poland was not a Communist
country. And he did so with the same conviction as when he told us Oswald
was a lone nut. In the final analysis, perhaps the strangest thing about
Ford and his presidency is that he almost won election in 1976.
In the end though, the peanut farmer ran him out of town.
Here, President Ford and Strom Thurmond discuss politics circa 1975.
Quick. What is Gerald Ford's middle name?
Give up? It's Rudolph.
to
my next rant (when
posted)
My
Rants and Raves
The
Joseph C. Hinson Home Page
What follows is a transcript of Ford's speech announcing his pardon
of Richard Nixon. I have lifted it verbatim from The
History Place: Great Speeches Collection.
Ladies and gentlemen:
I have come to a decision which I felt I
should tell you and all of my fellow American citizens, as soon
as I was certain in my own mind and in
my own conscience that it is the right thing to do.
I have learned already in this office that
the difficult decisions always come to this desk. I must admit
that many of them do not look at all the
same as the hypothetical questions that I have answered freely
and perhaps too fast on previous occasions.
My customary policy is to try and get all
the facts and to consider the opinions of my countrymen and
to take counsel with my most valued friends.
But these seldom agree, and in the end, the decision is
mine. To procrastinate, to agonize, and
to wait for a more favorable turn of events that may never come
or more compelling external pressures that
may as well be wrong as right, is itself a decision of sorts
and a weak and potentially dangerous course
for a President to follow.
I have promised to uphold the Constitution,
to do what is right as God gives me to see the right, and to
do the very best that I can for America.
I have asked your help and your prayers,
not only when I became President but many times since. The
Constitution is the supreme law of our
land and it governs our actions as citizens. Only the laws of God,
which govern our consciences, are superior
to it.
As we are a nation under God, so I am sworn
to uphold our laws with the help of God. And I have
sought such guidance and searched my own
conscience with special diligence to determine the right
thing for me to do with respect to my predecessor
in this place, Richard Nixon, and his loyal wife and
family.
Theirs is an American tragedy in which we
all have played a part. It could go on and on and on, or
someone must write the end to it. I have
concluded that only I can do that, and if I can, I must.
There are no historic or legal precedents
to which I can turn in this matter, none that precisely fit the
circumstances of a private citizen who
has resigned the Presidency of the United States. But it is
common knowledge that serious allegations
and accusations hang like a sword over our former
President's head, threatening his health
as he tries to reshape his life, a great part of which was spent
in the service of this country and by the
mandate of its people.
After years of bitter controversy and divisive
national debate, I have been advised, and I am compelled
to conclude that many months and perhaps
more years will have to pass before Richard Nixon could
obtain a fair trial by jury in any jurisdiction
of the United States under governing decisions of the
Supreme Court.
I deeply believe in equal justice for all
Americans, whatever their station or former station. The law,
whether human or divine, is no respecter
of persons; but the law is a respecter of reality.
The facts, as I see them, are that a former
President of the United States, instead of enjoying equal
treatment with any other citizen accused
of violating the law, would be cruelly and excessively
penalized either in preserving the presumption
of his innocence or in obtaining a speedy determination
of his guilt in order to repay a legal
debt to society.
During this long period of delay and potential
litigation, ugly passions would again be aroused. And our
people would again be polarized in their
opinions. And the credibility of our free institutions of
government would again be challenged at
home and abroad.
In the end, the courts might well hold that
Richard Nixon had been denied due process, and the verdict
of history would even be more inconclusive
with respect to those charges arising out of the period of his
Presidency, of which I am presently aware.
But it is not the ultimate fate of Richard
Nixon that most concerns me, though surely it deeply troubles
every decent and every compassionate person.
My concern is the immediate future of this great
country.
In this, I dare not depend upon my personal
sympathy as a longtime friend of the former President, nor
my professional judgment as a lawyer, and
I do not.
As President, my primary concern must always
be the greatest good of all the people of the United
States whose servant I am. As a man, my
first consideration is to be true to my own convictions and my
own conscience.
My conscience tells me clearly and certainly
that I cannot prolong the bad dreams that continue to
reopen a chapter that is closed. My conscience
tells me that only I, as President, have the
constitutional power to firmly shut and
seal this book. My conscience tells me it is my duty, not merely
to proclaim domestic tranquility but to
use every means that I have to insure it. I do believe that the
buck stops here, that I cannot rely upon
public opinion polls to tell me what is right. I do believe that
right makes might and that if I am wrong,
ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference. I
do believe, with all my heart and mind
and spirit, that I, not as President but as a humble servant of
God, will receive justice without mercy
if I fail to show mercy.
Finally, I feel that Richard Nixon and his
loved ones have suffered enough and will continue to suffer,
no matter what I do, no matter what we,
as a great and good nation, can do together to make his goal of
peace come true.
Now, therefore, I, Gerald R. Ford, President
of the United States, pursuant to the pardon power
conferred upon me by Article II, Section
2, of the Constitution, have granted and by these presents do
grant a full, free, and absolute pardon
unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States
which he, Richard Nixon, has committed
or may have committed or taken part in during the period from
July (January) 20, 1969, through August
9, 1974.
In witness whereof, I have hereunto set
my hand this eighth day of September, in the year of our Lord
nineteen hundred and seventy-four, and
of the Independence of the United States of America the one
hundred and ninety-ninth.
Gerald R. Ford - September 8, 1974
I used three books as sources for this rant:
-- Walt Brown's The People v. Lee Harvey Oswald (Carroll &
Graff Publishers, Inc. 1992,a fictional book drawing upon sources from
the public record)
-- Mark Lane's Rush To Judgment (Thunder's Mouth Press 1992,
a reprint with additional material from Lane's book of the same name from
the mid-60s)
-- Mark North's Act of Treason: The Role of J. Edgar Hoover in
the Assassination of President Kennedy (Carroll & Graff Publishers,
Inc. 1991)
to
my next rant (when
posted)
My
Rants and Raves
The
Joseph C. Hinson Home Page