Pardon of Richard Nixon

Based on Wikipedia: Pardon of Richard Nixon

The Piece of Paper Gerald Ford Carried in His Wallet

For years after leaving the presidency, Gerald Ford carried a folded piece of paper in his wallet. It was a fragment of a Supreme Court ruling from 1915, and he would pull it out whenever anyone questioned his most controversial decision. The passage stated, in essence, that accepting a pardon is the same as confessing guilt.

This was Ford's quiet answer to the millions of Americans who believed he had let Richard Nixon get away with his crimes.

On September 8, 1974, Ford granted his predecessor "a full, free, and absolute pardon" for any crimes Nixon might have committed as president. The pardon came just one month after Nixon resigned in disgrace over the Watergate scandal. Ford's approval ratings immediately plummeted. His press secretary quit in protest. Many historians believe the pardon cost Ford the 1976 election.

Yet decades later, Ted Kennedy stood before an audience and announced that Ford had been right all along.

What Exactly Was Nixon Being Pardoned For?

To understand the pardon, you need to understand what Nixon had done—and what he was about to face.

The Watergate scandal began with a bungled burglary. In June 1972, five men were caught breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington. They were trying to plant listening devices and photograph documents. What made this a presidential crisis was the trail of evidence that led directly to Nixon's White House.

Nixon didn't order the break-in. But he tried to cover it up. He directed the Central Intelligence Agency to obstruct the Federal Bureau of Investigation's inquiry. He approved hush money payments to the burglars. He lied to investigators, to Congress, and to the American public.

The "smoking gun" tape, released on August 5, 1974, captured Nixon ordering the cover-up just days after the break-in. Once that tape became public, Nixon's position collapsed. Even his most loyal supporters in Congress abandoned him. He resigned four days later rather than face certain impeachment and likely conviction.

But resignation wasn't the end. Criminal prosecution remained very much on the table.

A President in Torment

After Air Force One delivered the Nixons to their home in San Clemente, California, something strange happened to the former president.

He fell apart.

His biographer, Jonathan Aitken, described Nixon as "a soul in torment." Congress had slashed his transition funding from $850,000 to $200,000—a pointed rebuke. Nixon arrived at his desk by seven every morning, but there was almost nothing for him to do. His former press secretary, Ron Ziegler, sat with him in silence for hours at a time.

Meanwhile, the country was not ready to let him go. Congress had dropped impeachment proceedings once Nixon resigned—you can't remove someone who has already left office—but that didn't prevent criminal charges. Federal prosecutors were actively considering indictments. State prosecutors had their own potential cases.

Nixon faced the real possibility of going to prison.

The Conversation Before the Resignation

Here is where the story gets murky, and where conspiracy theories have flourished for fifty years.

Before Nixon resigned, his chief of staff, Alexander Haig, met privately with Gerald Ford. At the time, Ford was vice president—a position he had held for less than a year, having been appointed to replace Spiro Agnew, who resigned over unrelated corruption charges. Ford was one heartbeat or one resignation away from the presidency.

Haig laid out Nixon's options. The president could fight impeachment all the way to a Senate trial. He could delay resignation and negotiate for censure instead of removal. He could even pardon himself and then resign—a legally untested maneuver that remains controversial to this day.

Then Haig mentioned another possibility: Nixon could agree to resign if Ford promised to pardon him afterward.

Ford's account, written in his 1979 memoir, was careful and lawyerly. He emphasized that Haig presented these as options being discussed by Nixon's staff, not as Haig's own recommendations. Ford claimed he made no promises and offered no suggestions.

But the meeting happened. The topic was raised. And one month after taking office, Ford issued exactly the pardon that had been floated.

Corrupt Bargain or Mercy?

The phrase "corrupt bargain" has a specific meaning in American political history. It was first used to describe the 1824 presidential election, when John Quincy Adams allegedly promised Henry Clay the position of Secretary of State in exchange for Clay's support in the House of Representatives. The accusation haunted Adams throughout his presidency.

Now the same phrase was being hurled at Gerald Ford.

Ford's critics argued the sequence was too convenient. Nixon elevates Ford to the vice presidency. Ford becomes president when Nixon resigns. Ford immediately pardons Nixon. The pattern looked like a backroom deal to protect a criminal president.

Ford denied it, repeatedly and emphatically. He testified before the House Judiciary Committee on October 17, 1974, becoming the first sitting president to appear before the House since Abraham Lincoln. Under oath, he insisted there had been no deal.

The journalist Bob Woodward—one of the two reporters whose investigation had unraveled Watergate—offered a different explanation years later. According to Woodward, Ford once told him that the pardon stemmed primarily from his friendship with Nixon. The two men had served together in Congress. Ford simply could not bear to watch his old friend prosecuted and possibly imprisoned.

Neither explanation satisfied Ford's critics.

What the Pardon Actually Said

Proclamation 4311, as the pardon was officially known, granted Nixon "a full, free, and absolute pardon" for "all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in" during his presidency.

Notice the phrasing: crimes he "may have committed." Ford was pardoning Nixon for crimes that had never been charged, never been tried, never been proven. This was legally unusual. Most pardons follow convictions. This one preceded any formal accusations.

Ford justified this approach in his televised announcement. The Nixon family's situation, he said, was "a tragedy in which we all have played a part. It could go on and on and on, or someone must write the end to it. I have concluded that only I can do that, and if I can, I must."

Nixon, for his part, issued a statement that fell short of the full contrition Ford had wanted:

I was wrong in not acting more decisively and more forthrightly in dealing with Watergate, particularly when it reached the stage of judicial proceedings and grew from a political scandal into a national tragedy. No words can describe the depth of my regret and pain at the anguish my mistakes over Watergate have caused the nation and the presidency, a nation I so deeply love, and an institution I so greatly respect.

Critics noted what Nixon did not say. He admitted to procedural failures—not acting "decisively" or "forthrightly"—but he never admitted to breaking the law. He expressed regret for "mistakes" rather than crimes. He apologized for anguish caused, not for the underlying acts.

It was the statement of a man who still believed he had done nothing fundamentally wrong.

The Legal Paradox of Accepting a Pardon

This brings us back to that piece of paper in Gerald Ford's wallet.

The case was Burdick v. United States, decided by the Supreme Court in 1915. George Burdick was a newspaper editor who refused to testify about the sources of articles concerning customs fraud. President Woodrow Wilson offered him a pardon for any crimes related to the matter, hoping to compel his testimony by removing his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination.

Burdick refused the pardon. The Supreme Court ruled that he had the right to refuse it. In explaining why someone might reject a pardon, the Court wrote that accepting one carries "an imputation of guilt" and that accepting it amounts to "a confession of guilt."

This is the passage Ford carried with him. By accepting the pardon, his logic went, Nixon had implicitly confessed. The pardon was not an exoneration. It was an admission.

Legal scholars debate whether this dicta—meaning observations by the Court that weren't strictly necessary to decide the case—carries binding legal weight. But for Ford, it provided moral cover. Nixon had confessed, in a sense, by accepting the pardon. Justice had been served.

The Unintended Consequences

The pardon's effects rippled outward in ways Ford likely did not anticipate.

Nixon was under subpoena to testify in the trial of his former aides—John Dean, H. R. Haldeman, and John Ehrlichman—all of whom faced criminal charges for their roles in the cover-up. The pardon created an awkward situation. Without the threat of prosecution, Nixon could no longer invoke his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. He would have been forced to testify fully, potentially implicating himself in acts for which he could no longer be punished.

Nixon avoided this problem by getting sick. In October 1974, he was hospitalized with phlebitis, a dangerous inflammation of the veins. His doctors told him he could have surgery or die. He chose surgery. The Washington Post, skeptical of the timing, published a cartoon showing Nixon with a cast on the wrong foot. Judge John Sirica excused Nixon from testifying over the defendants' objections.

Congress, meanwhile, took steps to ensure Nixon couldn't benefit further. Lawmakers passed legislation directing Ford to retain Nixon's presidential papers and tapes, overriding the former president's claims of ownership. This began a legal battle that lasted three decades and was eventually lost by Nixon's estate. Those materials became the foundation for understanding what had actually happened in the Nixon White House.

The Political Fallout

The pardon devastated Ford politically.

His approval rating dropped from 71 percent to 50 percent almost overnight—one of the sharpest declines ever recorded. His press secretary and close friend, Jerald terHorst, resigned in protest, unwilling to defend a decision he believed was wrong.

The New York Times called the pardon "a profoundly unwise, divisive and unjust act" that showed Ford had "signally failed to provide courageous and impartial moral leadership."

In the 1974 midterm elections, held just two months after the pardon, Republicans lost 43 seats in the House and 4 in the Senate. Watergate and the pardon were not the only factors—the economy was struggling too—but they certainly contributed to the rout.

Two years later, Ford narrowly lost the presidential election to Jimmy Carter. Ford himself believed the pardon was a major reason for his defeat. The American public, it seemed, was not ready to forgive the man who had forgiven Nixon.

History's Verdict

And then something unexpected happened.

Over the decades, opinion shifted. What had seemed like an outrageous act of cronyism began to look, to some observers, like an act of statesmanship.

Ford's argument was simple: the country needed to move on. A Nixon trial would have consumed years. It would have kept the wounds of Watergate open indefinitely. Every day of testimony would have been front-page news, preventing the nation from addressing other pressing problems. Ford believed he had sacrificed his own political future to give America a chance to heal.

In 2001, the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation awarded Ford the Profile in Courage Award for the pardon. Ted Kennedy, presenting the award, acknowledged that he had initially opposed the pardon but had come to believe Ford made the right decision.

This was remarkable. Ted Kennedy was the liberal lion of the Senate, the last of the Kennedy brothers, a man who had spent his career championing causes opposite to Nixon's. If anyone might be expected to hold a grudge against the man who pardoned Nixon, it would be him. Instead, Kennedy concluded that Ford had shown genuine courage.

The Questions That Remain

Was there a deal? We will probably never know for certain. Ford denied it under oath. Nixon never confirmed it. Haig's account left room for interpretation. The circumstantial evidence is suggestive but not conclusive.

Was the pardon just? That depends on what you mean by justice. If justice requires that powerful people face the same legal consequences as everyone else, then the pardon was unjust. Nixon's subordinates went to prison for following his orders while Nixon retired to write books and rebuild his reputation as an elder statesman.

But if justice includes considerations of mercy, healing, and the national interest, the calculation becomes more complex. A prosecution might have satisfied the desire for accountability while prolonging national division. The pardon might have denied accountability while enabling reconciliation.

Was the pardon wise? Ford believed it was, and he spent his remaining decades defending it. The Profile in Courage Award suggested that at least some historians and politicians came to agree.

What the pardon undeniably demonstrated was the extraordinary breadth of presidential pardon power. The Constitution grants presidents the authority to pardon federal offenses with almost no restrictions. Ford used that power preemptively, before charges were filed, for offenses that might or might not have occurred. The Supreme Court has never definitively ruled on the limits of such preemptive pardons.

The precedent stands. A president can pardon someone for crimes that have never been charged, investigated, or even identified—as long as they are federal crimes. Whether this represents a wise constitutional design or a dangerous loophole remains a matter of debate.

Gerald Ford died on December 26, 2006, at the age of 93. By then, he had outlived Nixon by more than twelve years. The piece of paper from Burdick v. United States was no longer in his wallet—he had stopped carrying it at some point—but the pardon it was meant to justify had become his most enduring legacy.

History's verdict remains divided. Perhaps it always will be.