Gerald R. Ford: An Honorable Life

Chapter 13 - Reaction

220 Chapter 13 Reaction If circumstances permit, a President never faces the White House press without careful preparation. Typically, he is drilled by his most aggressive press aides and best-­ informed senior staff, often on a mock stage. There he composes and rehearses his answers to the most contentious questions his aides expect that reporters will ask. To prepare Ford for his first press conference, Hartmann enlisted a cadre of Ford loyalists: press secretary terHorst and his assistants, Paul Miltich and Paul Theis; counselor Jack Marsh; counsel Phil Buchen; national security adviser Brent Scowcroft; and economists Bill Seidman and Alan Greenspan. All gathered around the President’s desk in the Oval Office and began to badger him with their toughest questions: Are you going to send Nixon his tapes and papers? Do you agree with the public statements by Governor Nelson Rockefeller and Senate Republican Leader Hugh Scott that Nixon has suffered enough? Have you talked with Nixon personally about immunity from prosecution? Will you put a stop to all the press questions about whether you will pardon Nixon and the other Watergate defendants? Their questions were sure to be asked; although Nixon was gone, Washington could not stop talking about him. Ford disagreed. He doubted that he would be asked about Nixon; he thought that reporters would share his concerns about more important issues: how he intended to improve the imperiled economy, changes he planned to make in the Cabinet, the legislative program he was developing, the crisis in Cyprus, the threat of war in the Middle East, his plans for negotiations on strategic arms with Brezhnev. Hartmann and others thought Ford mistaken, and persisted with more questions about Nixon. Reaction 221 After half an hour of their badgering, an annoyed President told his staff: “You’re wasting my time. No more questions about Nixon.” If he were asked about Nixon, he said, he would not comment, but say any action would be up to the Special Prosecutor and the courts. To his staff, Ford had dismissed talk of Nixon, but to the Nixon loyalists who were still running the White House, the threat of prosecution of the exiled former President was their prime concern. One even had a plan for the new President to absolve their former boss. Leonard Garment, Nixon’s longtime friend still serving as White House special counsel, had been talking with outsiders—­ Eric Sevareid of CBS, John Osborne of the New Republic, and former Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas—­ about a Presidential pardon for Nixon. Each encouraged Garment. Fortas said “the convulsion of a trial of Richard Nixon was the last thing the country needed.” Returning to the White House, Garment reported his conversations to Haig, and asked Haig whether he should propose that President Ford use his first press conference as the occasion to pardon Nixon. Yes, Haig replied, “Time to get something in.” Working into the night, Garment wrote a legal brief justifying the pardon. Early the next morning he and Ray Price, a holdover Nixon speechwriter, drafted a statement that Ford might use in announcing the pardon at the press conference that afternoon. When they finished, Garment delivered the brief and draft statement to Buchen to give to Ford, and gave a copy to Haig. In his regular morning meeting with Ford, Haig briefed the President on Garment’s proposal that he pardon Nixon. Immediately after, Haig telephoned Garment. He said he had just spent forty-­ three minutes alone with the President, and reported that Ford would announce the pardon that day. “It’s all set,” Haig said. “Don’t leave. Hang around.” An hour later Haig again called Garment and assured him: “It’s on track.” “Clearly,” Garment wrote later, “Haig’s expectation at that point was that President Ford was going to do it that day.” After his meeting with Haig, Ford held his regular morning meeting with Hartmann and terHorst. Updating him on the morning news and plans for the afternoon press conference, they affirmed that he would be careful in responding to any questions about Nixon and firm in his decision not to comment on matters before the courts. Ford then saw 222 gerald r. ford Buchen, who suggested that Ford respond to Nixon questions with the simple answers they had worked out: I’m not going to decide this now, and I have nothing more to say about this. In his hand Buchen also...