Posted on 12/28/2006 5:40:18 AM PST by alisasny
Last lunch with a legend
Speaks candidly about the WMDs and war in Iraq
BY THOMAS M. DeFRANK DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF
Thomas DeFrank, the Washington bureau chief for the Daily News, is seen in this 1996 photo talking to Gerald Ford. The men struck up a friendship that lasted three decades. Below, the two chat on Air Force One.
Daily News Washington Bureau Chief Thomas M. DeFrank interviewed Gerald Ford more than three dozen times during the late President's retirement years. He saw Ford in November at his California home and spent more than two hours with him May 11 for this, his final interview.
RANCHO MIRAGE, Cal. - Jerry Ford was a politician of rare amiability, but this day he was hopping mad.
"They won't let me go in the pool and swim," the former President fumed as I joined him in the study of his Sand Dune Road home. "It's terrible."
Fighting a nasty cough and more frail than I had ever seen him, Ford was furious with his doctors. An accomplished skier, a man who once religiously swam laps twice a day had just been beached.
"I go in and I paddle back and forth at the shallow end," he railed. "It's terrible. It worries me that I'm under these limitations."
Ford was a few weeks shy of his 93rd birthday as we chatted for about 45 minutes. He'd been visited by President Bush three weeks earlier and said he'd told Bush he supported the war in Iraq but that the 43rd President had erred by staking the invasion on weapons of mass destruction.
"Saddam Hussein was an evil person and there was justification to get rid of him," he observed, "but we shouldn't have put the basis on weapons of mass destruction. That was a bad mistake. Where does [Bush] get his advice?"
Ford was predictably defensive about Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, his two White House chiefs of staff. Asked why Cheney had tanked in public opinion polls, he smiled. "Dick's a classy guy, but he's not an electrified orator."
But he didn't like Bush's domestic surveillance program. "It may be a necessary evil," he conceded. "I don't think it's a terrible transgression, but I would never do it. I was dumbfounded when I heard they were doing it."
Ever the political junkie, the guy who used to travel 250 days a year as House minority leader said he couldn't wait for a rematch between Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani in 2008. For years he'd been telling me Hillary would run and make "a darn good candidate." As for Rudy: "Giuliani is an electrifying guy and he can be tough. That would be a great contest between Hillary and Rudy."
We had been meeting in the desert regularly for more than three decades, beginning with a memorable, still-unpublished 1974 interview when he was vice president. Ford had always been extraordinarily generous to me, and a strong professional relationship had developed. Yet today was a first: Unexpectedly, he asked me to stay for lunch.
As he struggled out of his easy chair, his frailty became more apparent. It's only a few feet from his study to the dining room of the Fords' one-story ranch home, but he couldn't walk without a nurse at one elbow and Betty at the other.
We worked our way through the vichyssoise and poached chicken salad. As shop talk gave way to small talk about friends, families and halcyon days of yore, Ford was still brooding about his doctors.
"Do you want some butter pecan ice cream?" he asked with a grin, harking back to the days when Air Force One never left a tarmac anywhere in the world without an ample supply of his favorite dessert.
What do the doctors say about that, I wondered.
"We have it anyhow," he roared, relishing another barb for his medical Torquemadas.
Toward the end, Ford showed a sentimentality I'd rarely seen in him. We reminisced a lot about the Air Force Two days, when just five reporters and a vice president desperate to hold his beloved Republican Party together amid the wreckage of Watergate hurtled around the country in a twin-engine Convair propjet so slow we dubbed it Slingshot Airways.
He talked about how he regretted that his "magnificent" mother hadn't lived to see her son Leslie King become the 38th President. He misted over when he remembered how much he loved his adoptive father, so much that he took his name, Gerald R. Ford.
"When I wake up at night and can't sleep," he mused in a voice suddenly far away, "I remember Grand Rapids."
Suddenly, the hairs on my arms stood on edge, as they have done again each time I remember that powerful moment. Now I knew why he'd finally invited me to lunch.
In his typically gentle, understated way, Jerry Ford was telling me goodbye.
Originally published on December 28, 2006
So Ford DID support the war in Iraq. I knew that Woodward was lying. It's not the first time and it won't be the last.
I actually tend to agree with Ford if this claim is correct.
If one reads Woodward's words carefully, it's obvious the man used Ford's quotes to his advantage. I can't decide which is more disgusting - that or his his timing.
Impossible to decide. And on top of that, because of what Woodward is saying, there are people who are revising their opinion of Ford and not to his credit, and Ford cannot defend himself. What a despicable worm Woodward is.
Once a scavenger, always a scavenger.
Except if you really look at Bush's pre-war speeches, Bush used 4 points to support the war and the one concerning weapons of mass destruction was not that Saddam had nukes, but that he was working to get nukes, which was true. It was only to the UN where we really pushed the issue of weapons of mass destruction.
Me to.
And that was because it was the only way Blair and Britain would have come along. Despite all the valour shown by the British soldiers it turned out to be a bad bargain.
.
Make that 'me too'.
"But he didn't like Bush's domestic surveillance program. "It may be a necessary evil," he conceded. "I don't think it's a terrible transgression, but I would never do it. I was dumbfounded when I heard they were doing it."
Last time I heard the DSP is a deliberate misstatement of the DBM concerning the Data Mining technique of linking phone numbers to phone numbers.
Domestic listing is not happening without court order.
Sort of a give away.
If Journalism, as an industry, had any integrity left, they would pillory Woodward. He has been shamelessly printing lies for decades, but they do not denounce him. Instead, they hold him up as an icon as to what a good Journalist ought to be: in short, an anti-Republican activist.
Yep ... Sure sounds like Woodward lied
Very nice article about President Ford .. Thank you for the ping, Peach
Let's hear it for professional journalism.
They're not called presstitutes fer nuthin'....
Saw this fellow interviewed on a couple shows last night.He seemed the perfect person to have on to talk about Ford given the circumstances.Of course, his information didn't lead the morning shows this morning, Woodward's did.They are so transparent it is pathetic.
Morning,Bah!
I was just watching CBS where some info babe was interviewing Ford's pastor about the funeral. They segued to Harry Smith who immediately reported Ford said in an interview two years ago he was against the War in Iraq. Then he mentioned the weapons of mass destruction thing.
The overall biggest push was about WMDs. I think that was a tactical PR mistake.
As far as the congress was concerned there were far more than four points, however the only one remembered by anyone, is WMD's. Selective memories, don't you just love it?
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