GERALD R. FORD

I voted for him.

On June 17, 1972, police apprehended five men who were attempting to burglarize the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. A little more than two years later, on August 9, 1974, Richard Nixon resigned the Presidency and Gerald R. Ford was sworn into office as our thirty-eighth President.

One of Ford's first official acts was to issue a pardon for Nixon, protecting him from prosecution for any crimes Nixon committed while in office and effectively ending the ongoing Congressional investigations that were gathering evidence for his impeachment.

There are those who believed this pardon was the result of a deal between Nixon and Ford. Suspicion about this possible act of political corruption was one of the reasons Gerald Ford became our first unelected President, losing to Jimmy Carter in 1976.

Personally, I didn't suspect Ford of doing anything shady. I assumed that Nixon people had been sniffing around the Hill and that they had decided that Ford was likely to end the Watergate spectacle with a pardon if given the opportunity. Ford was well known around Washington after 25 years in Congress, and his opinions on the eventual conclusion of the Watergate proceedings were probably widely circulated.

When Nixon left office, and Ford pardoned him, I thought that was fine. I thought the worst punishment that Nixon could face would be removal from office, and that had already happened. I thought the nation had been paralyzed by the continuing Constitutional crisis of Watergate for almost two years, and it was time to move on.

So in 1976, I voted for Ford. I don't even regret that, since the better candidate won anyway.

But now I wonder about that pardon.

On the night of Nixon's resignation, I was walking across a college campus and saw a security guard I recognized. I said, "Hey, did you hear the news? Nixon has resigned!" I was surprised by his reaction. He seemed irritated and said, "Yep, they hounded him out of office."

I wonder how many other people still supported Nixon at that point, and might still believe today that he deserved to remain in office.

For me, Watergate was just the tip of the iceberg. I thought sleazy Nixon campaign aides had planned the breakin to spy on the Democrats , and that Nixon had just bungled his way into a failed coverup.

I thought Nixon SHOULD have been impeached for carrying on an illegal and unapproved war run by the CIA outside the borders of Vietnam, in Laos and Cambodia.

I thought Nixon SHOULD have been impeached for his doctrine of "impoundment", when he asserted the authority to ignore laws passed by Congress by "impounding" the funds authorized for programs he didn't like.

I thought Nixon SHOULD have been impeached for extortion and corruption in raising millions of dollars of cash contributions from donors who were promised favors if they did and punishment if they didn't support his 1972 re-election campaign.

I thought Nixon SHOULD have been impeached for many serious Constitutional issues, and I was glad to see him go no matter how he went.

But with the pardon, the investigations stopped, and the full extent of the criminal acts of his administration were never exposed. And a whole host of sleazy criminals were left to continue their traitorous assault on our democracy. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz were all working for Nixon at the time of his resignation.

If the investigations had proceeded, if all the facts had come out then, maybe the Nixon Administration would have become universally disgraced and discredited before the American public. Maybe those who served in it would have become political pariahs, forever deemed unfit for public service.

And the world would be at peace today.