Gerald Ford Off-the-Record
Here are some highlights of Gerald Ford’s candid comments detailed in the fascinating new book, Write It When I'm Gone, by Thomas DeFrank: Ford’s regret over giving President Nixon the benefit of the doubt too much on Watergate and his timidity in not pressing Nixon for a just-between-old-friends accounting of the facts. Ford also confided that the two presidents had confidentially agreed they should avoid appearing together to avoid fueling speculation that his pardon of Nixon had been part of a precooked deal between the two. It was an arrangement that continued long into retirement.
Ford’s contempt for Nixon’s palace guard, and why he never socialized with Spiro Agnew in retirement even though they lived only a few miles apart in the desert. In one memorable conversation with DeFrank, Ford, with a flash of irritation, recalled how Agnew, facing allegations about cash kickbacks in exchange for state contracts, lied to his face when Ford asked the then vice president about the transactions.
Ford’s experiences on the Warren Commission. During one conversation in 1992, DeFrank and Ford, the last surviving member of the commission, were discussing Oliver Stone and JFK, Stone’s controversial feature film about the Kennedy assassination. DeFrank writes, “[I]n Ford’s opinion, [Stone] had distorted the truth and impugned the work of the Warren Commission. . . . Ford felt strongly that Stone’s movie was artistically and historically irresponsible. ‘I signed the report,’ he recalled in 1992. ‘I’ve never changed my opinion. I feel as strongly today, Tom, on the two basic fundamental issues. Number one, Lee Harvey Oswald was the assassin. Number two, the commission found no evidence of a conspiracy, foreign or domestic. I should add a footnote: the staff, in its draft of the report, said there was no conspiracy, foreign or domestic. The members of the commission unanimously changed it to say the commission found no evidence of a conspiracy. Now, the question is raised: has there been any new, credible evidence since 1963? In my opinion, absolutely not. I don’t understand how Oliver Stone latched on to the weakest conspiratorial theory with Jim Garrison. The Garrison theory is totally discredited. It bothers me that a commercial, moneymaking movie can be believed by so many people.’”
How Gerald Ford’s deep disdain for Jimmy Carter finally ended. The rapprochement began on a trip to Cairo in the fall of 1981, when Ford, Carter and Richard Nixon traveled together on a government jet as Ronald Reagan’s emissaries to the funeral of Anwar Sadat. DeFrank writes, “[Ford said,] ‘After several meals we had together, I felt there was a warmth that really hadn’t existed [before], and I felt very good about it. . . . I guess we figured we were gonna be in a plane together for forty hours, more or less, and in order to be pleasant [chuckles], it was a good idea to just wipe the slate clean, which we did. . . . There was more warmth than I had seen previously. We were always friendly on a professional basis, but we found in talking about a number of non-issue-oriented matters that we had an understanding of one another.’” DeFranks shows how the pace of their détente accelerated over a shared practical interest in presidential libraries, and the fact that both ex-presidents had strong reasons not to like Ronald Reagan.
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