Big Surprise: Cheney Eulogizes Ford for Pardoning Nixon

By Kurt Nimmo
Jan. 01, 2007

I wasn’t going to comment on the passing of Gerald Ford, probably the most forgettable president of recent times. But then Dick Cheney had to open his mouth and praise Ford for pardoning Nixon.

“It was this man, Gerald R. Ford, who led our republic safely though a crisis that could have turned to catastrophe,” said Cheney, speaking in the Capitol Rotunda where Ford’s body is on display. “Gerald Ford was almost alone in understanding that there can be no healing without pardon,” reports ABC News.

Nope, and there was no healing for the Tate and LaBianca familes, as Charlie Manson, Patricia Krenwinkel, Susan Atkins, and Tex Watson were not pardoned. It should be noted that Charlie Manson didn’t actually kill anybody in August, 1969, he simply ordered his cronies to do it, just like Nixon ordered his cronies to kill countless numbers of people in Southeast Asia.

I tried to avoid all of this, but the hype about Ford, who was a doorstop of a president, is disgusting. We hear about Ford the Eagle Scout, the all-star football player. Ford worked in a paint factory, he was a top student. Ford had “the character of a rock solid man of unquestioned integrity,” according to Ben Stein, the former Nixon and Ford speechwriter turned comedian.

Ford, according to Stein, echoing Cheney, had “guts” to pardon the criminal Nixon “when the liberal media were screaming for his blood.”

Of course, all of this had nothing to do with liberals or conservatives, bricklayers or office clerks—it had to do with breaking the law, with “dirty tricks,” snooping on political opponents, sabotaging Democratic presidential candidates, going after Daniel Ellsberg for the public service he provided by bringing the Pentagon Papers to light, ordering the FBI to investigate CBS News reporter Daniel Schorr, discussing the possibility of having newspaper columnist Jack Anderson assassinated, and other crimes (evading taxes, accepting illicit campaign contributions, ordering secret bombings, and harassing opponents with executive agencies, wiretaps, and break-ins), all of it culminating in Watergate.

For Stein and Cheney, these crimes are chicken scratch, and to insist Nixon be arrested, tried, and sentenced to prison would have led to “catastrophe” for the “republic” (it is interesting Cheney chose this word, as we no longer live in a republic and his handlers and minions are steadfastly opposed to the idea of a republic, preferring instead unitary decidership, i.e., dictatorship).

Doing the time for the crime is, for the comic Ben Stein, supposedly a Republican (nowadays, all good Republicans are neocons), tantamount to a feeding frenzy by “liberals,” never mind there were no liberals at the Washington Post, where the story incubated and ultimately grew legs.

Obviously, Nixon was a liability for the ruling elite and he had to go. It had nothing to do with “liberals,” or the cultural myth portrayed by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward in the role of “investigative journalists,” but had everything to do with dumping Nixon, an embarrassing and recalcitrant criminal, a liability for our rulers. It should be noted that Bob Woodward is a former military intelligence officer and the Washington Post, under publisher Phil Graham and managing editor Alfred Friendly, was a CIA asset attached to Operation Mockingbird.

Beyond the Nixon pardon, we have Jerry Ford, in 1975, conniving in an exercise of mass murder with the old mass murder pro and consummate war criminal, Henry Kissinger. On his way back from China, where he parlayed with the “communist” serial murderer Mao Zedong, Ford stopped off in Jakarta, Indonesia, to talk shop with yet another serial murderer, Indonesian dictator Suharto.

“On 4 or 5 December, while still in Beijing, Kissinger received a cable from the State Department suggesting that the Indonesians had ‘plans’ to invade East Timor,” explains National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 62. “Thus, Ford or Kissinger could not have been too surprised when, in the middle of a discussion of guerrilla movements in Thailand and Malaysia, Suharto suddenly brought up East Timor…. Ford and Kissinger took great pains to assure Suharto that they would not oppose the invasion.”

Kissinger went so far as to suggest, for the sake of public consumption, the invasion be characterized as a “self-defense” operation. Indeed, for nearly twenty years, Indonesian attacks on East Timor were all but ignored by the corporate media. Indonesia not only massacred hundreds at Dili (where unarmed protestors were slaughtered) and LiquiÃ§Ã¡ (where church parishioners were systematically gunned down), but the government also engaged in a “scorched earth” policy of burning crops, starvation, torture, targeting journalists, and other war crimes ultimately responsible for the murder of upward to 200,000 Timorese.

Prior to this, the ex-football player and Eagle Scout Ford remarked to Suharto: “We understand the problem and the intentions you have.” Indeed. Sort of like the intention a Mafia caporegime has toward a street rival.

But never mind. It is quite natural Cheney considers Gerald Ford a hero, especially considering the unlikely possibility he may need his own pardon.

Of course, before Cheney faces justice or even resignation, hell will freeze over, aliens will land and declare world peace, wave a magic wand and make all the nukes disappear, and Elvis will resurface at a black jack table in Carson City, Nevada.