Cheney hails Nixon pardon at Ford's state funeral

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Vice President Dick Cheney hailed former U.S. President Gerald Ford at a state funeral on Saturday for pardoning Richard Nixon, his disgraced predecessor, and helping to heal the nation after the Watergate scandal.

Ford, the 38th president who died on Tuesday at age 93, steered the United States through "a crisis that could have turned to catastrophe," said Cheney, chief of staff in Ford's White House 30 years ago and an honorary pallbearer at the ceremony in the U.S. Capitol rotunda.

Cheney spoke after it emerged that Ford, a moderate Republican, had said in an interview with journalist Bob Woodward that he disagreed with President George W. Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq. The report was published in The Washington Post two days after Ford's death.

Ford held office for 2-1/2 years after Richard Nixon became the only president to resign. Nixon did so on August 9, 1974, implicated in a cover-up of a break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate office complex in Washington.

Ford stirred lasting controversy by granting Nixon a blanket pardon for any crimes he may have committed -- a move that helped Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, beat him in 1976.

"In politics it can take a generation or more for a matter to settle, for tempers to cool," Cheney said. "We will never know what further unravelings, what greater malevolence might have come in that time of furies turned loose and hearts turned cold. But we do know this: America was spared the worst and this was the doing of an American president."

Ford's flag-draped casket was borne to the Capitol by motorcade after arriving at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. The casket was flown from California aboard a Boeing 747 from the presidential fleet.

A limousine bearing Ford's widow, Betty, 88, paused briefly en route to the Capitol at the World War Two memorial to mark his war-time service in the U.S. Navy.

He will lie in state until Tuesday, when Bush will eulogize him at another memorial service at the Washington National Cathedral. Burial is to be on Wednesday on a hillside at Ford's presidential library in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Bush was at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, and did not attend. Also absent were Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid and incoming House of Representatives' Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The Washington Post said about 500 of the 535 members of the next Congress skipped it as did six of the nine Supreme Court justices and all but one member of Bush's cabinet, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez.

Many were traveling during the holiday week.

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who also served as Pentagon chief under Ford and was to have been another honorary pallbearer, missed it because he was snowed in New Mexico, NBC News reported. A Rumsfeld spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.