Closing the Chapter on Watergate Wasn't Done Lightly

Haig learned of the testimony being drafted in a phone call from J. Fred Buzhardt, who had remained at the Ford White House during the transition. It stated that Haig had offered the presidency in return for the pardon on Aug. 1 but Ford had rejected the deal.

"Al, I think you'd better come to the White House," Buzhardt told Haig. "These boys have prepared sworn testimony for the president that could very well result in your indictment."

Haig drove to the White House and insisted on seeing President Ford. Within minutes, Haig was in the Oval Office.

"What do you want?" Ford asked.

"The truth," Haig replied. "That's all."

"You'll have it, Al," Ford said. He handed Haig a yellow legal tablet and said, "You write that portion as you remember."

So the conclusions of Ford's top aides that a deal had been offered were initially in Ford's testimony but were excised at the insistence of Haig.

'I Was Naive'

Twenty-three years later, on Sept. 22, 1997, in a suite at the Waldorf Towers in New York, I asked Ford whether he thought Haig had offered him a deal.

"Well, I guess I was naive," Ford said. "I was naive that anybody would offer a deal, because all my political life people never came to me, 'I'm going to give you a political donation, I expect something in return.' People never came to me that way, because they knew damn well I wouldn't be a part of it. So when Al Haig comes with those six terms, I just didn't visualize him as one making a proposition to make a deal. It never went through my mind."

I continued to press Ford. Did he agree, when all the facts and conclusions were examined now, decades later, that Haig had offered a deal?

"I would agree," Ford said, "because after talking to Hartmann, Marsh and Harlow, I wanted the record clear that I did not agree to consummate. . . . So that it has to be very clear that, yes, on paper, without action it was a deal, but it never became a deal because I never accepted."

Nixon's 'Confession'

I interviewed Ford on the subject again on May 20, 1998, at his home office in Rancho Mirage, Calif., situated on a golf course in the midst of the desert. He was alone.

He brought up his pardon decision, noting that no president had "caught as much hell as I did." His recollections were clear. I suspected he had replayed them many times in his mind.

"I was overwhelmed with the public reaction," he said. "I guess I anticipated a lot, but not to the extent that happened. But . . . it didn't faze me one bit. If anything, it made me more stubborn that I was right."

I asked why he hadn't pressed Nixon harder for an admission of guilt.

"We were under a time pressure," he responded. Once he'd made the decision to grant the pardon, he had to move quickly. "The longer it took to resolve some of these things, the more likely that the issue would have come to the surface and it could have been a different ballgame."

I said I agreed, it would have leaked. Still, a forthright acknowledgment by Nixon could have ended the historical debate on that question. Why didn't Ford make more of the 1915 Supreme Court decision in Burdick v. United States that held that accepting a pardon is tantamount to confession of guilt?

"I still carry it around in my pocket, that statement," Ford said. "I've got it in my wallet here because anytime anybody challenges me, I pull it out. I've got it here someplace." He searched around in his wallet, and handed me a folded, dog-eared piece of paper. It was a portion of the Burdick decision.

I began to read aloud. "Most important, the justices found that a pardon 'carries an imputation of guilt, acceptance, a confession of it.' " Ford seized on the last phrase and repeated it: " 'Acceptance, a confession of it.' " See, Nixon had confessed, he said. "That was always very reassuring to me."

Adapted from "Shadow," copyright Bob Woodward, Simon & Schuster, 1999.