Bob Woodward Describes Gerald Ford's Decision to Pardon Richard Nixon
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- Опубликовано: 18 фев 2020
- Bob Woodward of The Washington Post accepts the 2019 W.M. Kiplinger Distinguished Contributions to Journalism Award at the 2020 NPF Awards Dinner.
Washington Post associate editor, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and famed Watergate investigative reporter Bob Woodward described a conversation he had with former President Gerald Ford in the late 1990's. In that interview, Woodward said he asked Ford for at least the 7th time why he pardoned President Richard Nixon for Watergate.
Woodward described Ford as "one of the most honest, forthright person I had ever dealt with in Washington." He said Ford described how Nixon Chief of Staff Al Haig on August 1st, 1974 offered Ford the opportunity to be President if he would agree to pardon Nixon. Ford said he refused that offer. But Nixon resigned 8 days later anyway. And after ultimately becoming President decided later for the good of the country to pardon Nixon, knowing it would likely end his own political career.
Woodward said, "Instead of being corrupt, what Ford did (issuing Nixon's pardon) was quite gutsy." Ford was later honored with the John F. Kennedy library Profiles in Courage Award, as Woodward describes, saying Caroline Kennedy told Woodward she and her uncle Senator Ted Kennedy read his book about Ford's story and agreed that the Nixon pardon was 'gutsy.'
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Nixon should have pardoned himself and saved Ford from political suicide.
Here’s the truth. Bob Woodward wasn’t a journalist. He was a naval intelligence officer. He randomly decided to get into journalism and his first scoop happened, by dumb luck, to be the biggest scoop in the history of political journalism. It was dumb luck after all. Everyone who is in journalism knows that immediately after joining the profession, you can randomly find the biggest scoop in history. By doing this, Woodward ended the presidency of one of the most popular presidents (electorally) in U.S. history. Only FDR has more electoral college votes than Nixon. There was absolutely no CIA involvement at all. The CIA did not illegally obtain information and then launder it to a random journalist who was an intel officer 5 minutes before. That definitely didn’t happen. The CIA also loved Nixon so it wouldn’t make sense anyway.
The constant media attention about Nixon at the time when Ford needed to govern was pathetic. Ford was damned if he did and damned if he didnt. He had to do it.
Bs.
😂 calling Woodward and Bernstein groundbreaking journalists is whats funny. Mark Felts called them and gave them everything they had.
Nixon deserved to be pardoned.
He wanted the nation to move on, and what a way to do it. Admittedly not a great look (new guy excusing the predecessor), but its literally the same concept (moving on) Clinton would use when getting past the Lewinsky scandal.
He deserved to be convicted and what happened was an injustice, but he's dead now and what's done is done. Hopefully a new standard will be set with Trump being convicted.
Boy talk about gullible.