The Wars of Watergate (110 page)

Becker believed that Ford had instructed him to get a statement of contrition in Nixon’s response to the pardon. But during his second day in San Clemente, Ziegler said the subject was a waste of time, since Ford was not insisting on such a statement. Ford later admitted as much, but only he or Haig could have relayed that information to the Nixon camp. When Becker returned to Washington, he told the President of his suspicions, but Ford responded rather calmly.

Becker’s negotiations had an element of the surreal about them. Ford had the upper hand yet seemed to end up at a disadvantage. The San Clemente proceedings resembled a poker game, a pastime that Richard Nixon liked and supposedly had mastered in his Navy years. Perhaps Nixon had an advantage, using Haig to signal Gerald Ford’s playing hand; perhaps he simply outbluffed his successor. Becker certainly did not get any statement of contrition, and the agreement on Nixon’s presidential materials was so one-sided as to provoke an unprecedented response by Congress.

Nixon and his staff knew that Ford had decided on a pardon, founded in the realization that only in that manner could he end the national obsession with Watergate. Becker had a draft pardon with him, as well as the draft of an agreement on the presidential records. If Ford had been serious about the statement of contrition, Becker might well have carried an advance statement of that as well. He did not. Becker acknowledged that Ford probably was not altogether interested in such a statement, apparently believing that the “Nixon-haters” would object to a pardon under any conditions. The
pardon and the materials agreement were linked to some extent, according to Becker, yet the final result in both areas proved beneficial only to Richard Nixon.

Becker spent much of his time in San Clemente working with Miller and Ziegler (who regularly consulted with Nixon) on the language of a statement that the former President would make upon receipt of the pardon. That statement, Becker knew, was not to be one of contrition; it was, he admitted, merely “antiseptic,” and he did “not think it [said] very much.” The statement went through at least four drafts before all parties settled on its final language.

When he accepted the pardon, Nixon expressed the “hope” that Ford’s “compassionate act” would lift “the burden of Watergate” from the nation. Looking back on “the complex and confusing” events of the past two years and more, he acknowledged that he had been “wrong in not acting more decisively and more forthrightly”—but he admitted to no obstruction of justice regarding the Watergate affair itself, and he admitted to none of the abuses of power cited by the House Judiciary Committee. Nixon did leave one small opening for recognizing an obstruction of justice, when he stated that he might have been more forthright after Watergate had “reached the stage of judicial proceedings.” Others, he said, believed that his action had been illegal and self-serving. But, quietly defiant, Nixon simply stated that he now understood how his “own mistakes and misjudgments … seemed to support” that belief. Those “mistakes and misjudgments,” he concluded, amounted to the “wrong way” to deal with Watergate—and that was the “burden I shall bear for every day of the life that is left to me.” Watergate thus was merely a blunder, a mistake of the head, not the heart. For Nixon, his actions only “appeared” to cast him as a wrongdoer.

After all the hard bargaining, bargaining in which Nixon did not deal personally with Ford’s emissary, Benton Becker had a brief audience with Nixon. He claimed that he told Nixon the White House would stand by prevailing legal doctrine that acceptance of a pardon acknowledged guilt. Nixon seemed uninterested. Becker remembered the conversation as unfocused and depressing. He found Nixon to be “an absolute candidate for suicide; the most depressed human being I have ever met, and I didn’t think it was an act.” Becker duly conveyed that impression to President Ford. Whatever Nixon’s mood when he met with Becker, less than three weeks later he signed a contract for a two-million-dollar advance for his forthcoming memoirs.
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Nixon and his advisers apparently decided that they did not need to give Ford any statement of contrition. They believed—and probably knew—that Ford had determined to grant the pardon in any event, in order to get on with the nation’s business. Politically, they saw themselves in command of the situation. Melvin Laird later suggested that Ford believed he would get
a statement of contrition from Nixon out of gratitude, if for no other reason. Philip Buchen told reporters that Ford had made no effort to secure any acknowledgment of guilt from Nixon; instead, Buchen concentrated on persuading the media that Nixon’s acceptance of the pardon itself offered that acknowledgment.

Ford had the best playing hand, had he chosen to use it. Although Nixon had an advantage in knowing Ford’s intentions on the pardon, if Ford had really wanted that statement of contrition—if he had realized how important it would have been to soothe the inevitable public reaction—he simply could have issued the pardon, pointing out that its acceptance acknowledged guilt and that he knew Nixon deeply regretted his wrongdoing. How could Nixon have denied that statement?
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When Becker went to San Clemente, the disposition of presidential materials was at issue within the White House, amid reports that Nixon had sought to burn documents or remove his personal papers to San Clemente. According to Becker, Buzhardt had attempted, apparently with Haig’s full knowledge, to have the records flown to the former President. Becker understood that he was to link an agreement on that subject with the pardon. But, again, he suspected that Haig might have leaked that connection to Nixon’s staff and persuaded them to yield somewhat on the records. The “give” was slight, at best.

Becker brought back an agreement on the Nixon records subsequently known as the Nixon-Sampson Agreement, named after the Administrator of the General Services Administration, and announced the same day as the pardon. The agreement required the former President to deposit his papers in the National Archives, yet gave him “all legal and equitable title” to those materials, as well as the right to control access and to withdraw any of them after three years. Nixon was also assured that his tape recordings would be destroyed upon his death or in 1984, whichever came first. Buchen later defended the agreement because he considered the recordings as “so offensive and contrary” to personal privacy. For his part, Becker claimed that Ford was not going to be a party to the “final cover-up” of Watergate by giving Nixon possession of his papers—a statement that somehow ignored the fact that giving him unequivocal control over their use was a complete victory for Nixon.

Within weeks, Congress abrogated the Nixon-Sampson Agreement when it passed the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act of 1974, giving the National Archives custody of the Nixon records and the authority to determine their use. Specifically, Congress recognized the need “to provide the public with the full truth, at the earliest reasonable date, of the abuses of governmental power popularly identified under the generic term ‘Watergate.’ ” For thirteen years thereafter, Richard Nixon fought to prevent implementation of that law, seeking, as always, to control the understanding
of himself and his presidency. Finally, in 1987, the National Archives opened the first batch of papers of his Administration.
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The President felt the first shock of reaction to the pardon from within his inner circle, when Press Secretary Jerald F. terHorst resigned in anger on the day Ford announced the pardon. “The mere fact that Ford could throw away the new national mood of trust for the sake of Richard Nixon” left him wondering about Ford’s judgment. Ford’s pardon
“without getting in return a signed ‘confession’ ”
was most shocking of all. TerHorst could not understand Ford’s miscalculation. The President believed that he had offered an act of mercy; instead, terHorst thought, what he had done had all the earmarks of a secret deal and a denial of any principles of equal justice. Ford had healed nothing; to terHorst, he had reopened the “Watergate wound and rubbed salt into the public nerve ends.” TerHorst complained that Ford had not consulted with his advisers in pardoning Nixon. But in fact he had. Some in the White House agreed, and some disagreed, both among his own aides as well as among the Nixon holdovers. In any event, terHorst concluded that he could not do anything for the President; “my loyalty,” he told another reporter, “was pledged to the United States.”
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The news of the pardon produced a good deal of popular protest. The consummate grassroots politician had previously operated in the friendly confines of his Grand Rapids, Michigan, constituency, and he had faithfully reflected its wishes. Perhaps national soundings were out of Gerald Ford’s depth. Yet if he was determined to act as he did, and for the reasons he gave, he had no choice but to accept and then surmount the fickleness of public opinion. Logic compelled a general pardon for all those involved in Watergate if the principal culprit went free; but the political storm generated by the pardon of Nixon ended any such possibility.

The White House received nearly 270,000 written communications following the pardon, almost 200,000 of which opposed Ford’s act. Public officials, both high and low, expressed their feelings. A member of the Kansas House of Representatives congratulated Ford for doing “exactly the right thing.” An Alabama Democratic judge commended his “courageous and prompt action.” A California Assemblyman was “both astonished and appalled,” while an Arkansas state legislator warned Ford that he would always be perceived as a “caretaker, cleaning the dirty Nixon dishes he left behind.”

The widow of a prominent football coach applauded Ford for his “generous, courageous and compassionate decision,” but a popular husband-and-wife acting couple was outraged. Earlier, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward had telegraphed the new President, extending their good
wishes and support in the euphoric days of August. Now, while they could not “cancel” that message, they offered “a scream of protest and a plea to exercise wisdom.” The pardon, they thought, was “poorly advised and imperialistic”; it was “stupid,” and it made them more “nervous” than “mere political criminality.”

A District of Columbia judge, an old New Dealer, warmly supported the President. He dismissed the clamor of the media, given its longtime infection with a bias against Nixon. He scored the federal judges in the District for their refusal to grant venue changes for Watergate-related trials, contending that a typical local jury would “have been about as fair as the one convened by Cromwell to pass upon the fate of Charles I.” Rabbi Baruch Korff, who had valiantly defended Nixon during the waning months of his presidency, thought that the pardon “furthered the kinship between God and man.” Armand Hammer, a man equally adept at cutting deals with Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Leonid Brezhnev, and Nikita Khrushchev, praised Ford’s “compassionate and well-reasoned action.” He urged further pardons, “so we can leave this unhappy episode.” Good businessman that he was, Hammer offered a quid pro quo: the President should extend amnesty to “those misguided youths” who had evaded military service during the Vietnam war. That equation, which had become commonplace, enraged those who saw no comparison.
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The immediate congressional reaction to Nixon’s pardon undoubtedly startled the White House. In the Senate, Mike Mansfield remarked that “all men are created equal under law”—including “presidents and plumbers.” Robert C. Byrd seconded him, as did most congressional liberals across both parties. The responses reflected the state of Nixon’s support throughout the Watergate affair, as most Southern Democrats and Republicans approved the pardon. But the exceptions were revealing. Walter Flowers thought the pardon premature; and Wiley Mayne, who, given his long support of Nixon, had felt so betrayed by the “smoking gun” revelation, believed that Ford should have waited until Jaworski had decided on a course of action.

Representative Albert Quie (R–MN), a Ford crony in the Republican leadership, worried about the divisiveness of the pardon and urged the President not to grant further pardons until the trials of indicted presidential aides ended. House Democrat John Dingell (MI) bitterly assailed his old rival in a lengthy letter. He charged that the President had “whitewashed” the affair and had “gravely impaired” the idea of equal treatment under law. Dingell thought it best to spare the nation the “unseemly spectacle” of seeing Nixon in jail, for it would “greatly demean” the country and the office, but he believed that a “proper prosecution” was necessary to expose all the facts. Republican Paul McCloskey similarly believed that the legal process should have run its course before Ford pardoned the former President. The pardon,
and the apparent willingness of the White House to give Nixon his tapes and papers, only enhanced “public suspicion” that the Ford Administration now had “joined in the Watergate coverup.”

More seriously, Hugh Scott reported that Republican senators “bitterly” opposed pardons to those awaiting trial. Across the Republican spectrum, from Jesse Helms to James Buckley to Robert Packwood, the senators urged Ford “to go very slow on this volatile issue.” Many believed that the Nixon pardon would not hurt too much but that Ford’s timing would be very bad-given the approaching elections—if he issued a blanket pardon. It “just kills us,” Ford’s congressional liaison reported. A week later, that aide assured Republican congressmen that the President contemplated no further action. Charles Colson later claimed Nixon had promised him that he would not leave office “without wiping the slate clear” for everyone, and that there had been a deal for Ford to pardon all Administration defendants until the subsequent storm over the Nixon pardon.
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Nixon telephoned Ford about a week after the pardon, apologizing for the political embarrassment he had caused and expressing his gratitude. It was small comfort for Ford, however. The image of goodwill and honesty he had so assiduously fostered now dissipated. The President’s Gallup poll approval rating plunged in a month from 71 percent to 49 percent, and would eventually drop even more. Within two days, the White House reported that mail and telegrams ran five to one against Ford, an extraordinary admission.