A Ford/Nixon Conspiracy? [VIDEO]

Through the stench of Ford hagiographies comes this story from the memory of Nation publisher Victor Navasky.

Back when Ford penned his autobiography, the Nation got a hold of an early copy, re-publishing portions indicating that Ford may or may not have made a deal with Nixon to pardon or not pardon the disgraced president.

Navasky, an old-school New Yorker, tells the story peppered with remarks about Sandra Day O'Connor, Ford's football days, and of course the lawsuit against the Nation that went all the way up to the Supreme Court...

Transcript after the jump...But we're going to turn now to another issue. We have Victor Navasky on the line with us. He's publisher emeritus of The Nation magazine, Chair of the Columbia University Journalism Review, and this is a case that involved The Nation magazine and former President Ford. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Victor Navasky.

VICTOR NAVASKY: Good to be here Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about this case?

VICTOR NAVASKY: Sure. Let's see, in August of 1974, which was about a week before Nixon resigned, General Hague took Gerry Ford for a walk in the rose garden, and told him that Nixon was going bonkers and they had to get him out of there, and there were four possible ways to do that. The first three turned out to not realistic. But the fourth, he said, was if you would promise to pardon him after you become president, I think he would agree to resign.

Now, some years later Ford wrote about this in his memoir. And, someone, and his memoirs were being kept secret as they had sold publication rights and he had signed a contract saying he wouldn't talk about it until the book came out. And someone who had access to it asked me if I wanted to read it. And, I said not particularly, but I would, and it turned out that there was this one chapter that dealt with this conversation. And, the way Ford told the story, he put a gloss of innocence on it, and I’ll tell you what he said in a minute. But, we ran a story about the story, and subsequently we were sued by the publisher and it went all the way up to the Supreme Court, and here's what happened.

After Hague took Ford for a walk in the rose garden, Ford writes in his memoir that he came back to his office, and he mentioned this to an aide of his named, Bob Hartman, and the aide said, and then what did you say after you heard that? And, Ford said well, I didn't say anything. And, the aide said, gee, that's not good, silence implies assent. Because Ford had asked Hague well, is it possible to pardon someone before he is indicted? And Hague said yes, we checked it out with our lawyers and it is. So Ford says, he then went to sleep and he didn't say anything to Betty about it and the next morning he got up and he mentioned it to another aide, a fellow named Jack Marsh. And Marsh said, and then what did you say? And, Ford said, I didn’t say anything, and this aide said, gee, that could be a time bomb.

So, Ford then writes, that he then went and called General Hague and read him a statement, which he reprints in his book, and the statement said, nothing I did or didn't say yesterday should be taken to mean that I did or didn't agree to pardon or not to pardon Richard Nixon. And, he writes it as a kind of proforma thing, and the way I read it was it was a an attempt to put a gloss of innocence on a deal they had made. And this is a possible obstruction of justice, and that it’s something that he shouldn’t have done and against the law, and possibly, after he got nominated and confirmed, an impeachable offense, even.

In any event, we wrote the story and the--about a week or a couple of days later, I got a call from Herb Mitgang who was a reporter for The New York Times, saying, what’s your response to the telegram Harper sent you? I said what telegram? And they had sent it to The New York Times, but our copy didn't arrive until a day later. Threatening a lawsuit and telling us to cease and desist excerpting from the Ford memoirs, which of course we hadn’t done. Well the fact was, what had happened was, Time, which had agreed to excerpt from the book, canceled its excerpts because—cancelled its excerpts, because, the deal was that Ford wasn't - nothing was supposed to come out- about this conversation about the pardon until after they had run their story.