Tom DeFrank is a contributing editor at National Journal and was Washington bureau chief of the New York Daily News from 1996 to 2012. He also covered eight Presidents and 12 Presidential campaigns during his 25 years serving as Newsweek’s senior White House correspondent. His book, “Write it When I’m Gone”, published in 2007, detailed 30 years of private conversations with President Ford and was named both a New York Times and Washington Post bestseller.
Harvard Political Review: Several years ago, you gave a speech in honor of Gerald Ford’s ninetieth birthday. You mentioned accompanying then-Vice President Ford around the country for several months during the final days of Nixon’s presidency. What was it like traveling with the vice president during such a tumultuous time in American politics?
Tom DeFrank: There were only six reporters who traveled regularly with him—actually, five reporters and one photographer, and I’m the last one still on active duty. All the others have retired or died. But it was wonderful because we all knew he was going to be president. What nobody knew was how long it would take. And we all knew, selfishly, that we were developing a relationship with this guy….
HPR: You say you knew that Ford was going to be the next president. When did Ford know?
TD: Well, that’s too long a story to tell you here, but the bottom line is that, in April—Easter of 1974—we were just talking, and it wasn’t even an interview. I just wanted to catch up. What’s-going-on, you know? What do you make of this, that, and the other? Then, I got up to leave, and he said, “Put your notebook away… I want to ask you a question.” He showed me an article William Safire—a Nixon loyalist—had written accusing Ford of being disloyal for speculating about who would be in his government if he ever became president.
[Ford] said, “Why would Bill Safire do this? He knows I’ve been damned loyal to Dick Nixon. Why would he do this?” And so, I was 29 years old, and I said, “Well, Mr. Vice President, I think it’s pretty simple. Nixon’s a goner, and they all know it. And they’re really bitter, because they know that you’re going to be president soon.” And Ford blurted out, “You’re right about that, Tom, and when the history of Watergate is released, no one will be able to say that Jerry Ford contributed to it.” This is notable because he always said that he didn’t know he was going to be president till Al Haig called him the week before the Supreme Court made Nixon release those tapes…. So, that’s the first time I knew that he knew.
HPR: What was the date, again, when you were having this conversation with Ford?
TD: Four months before his stock answer of when he knew. But he was telling me he knew. And he was suddenly shocked at what he had done, and he said, “You didn’t hear that.” I said, “But I did hear that.” And he got up around his desk, and he came around—he was a tall guy––he grabbed my tie and said, “Tom, you’re not leaving this room until we have an understanding.” The understanding was, you can’t use this. And I didn’t say anything, because I was scared out of my mind, you know? So I didn’t say anything, and I think he took from my silence that I was going to use it, when all he should’ve taken from my silence was that I was scared shitless.
Then he said—still holding my tie—, “You can write this when I’m dead. Write it when I’m dead.” And I was so relieved. I said, “Okay.” We shook hands. He walked me to the door…. So that’s when I knew that he knew. Now, did he know earlier than that? I don’t know. That was four months earlier than the official version of Ford events. It would probably be helpful if we broadened the scope for just a little bit. Last year, you wrote a piece for the National Journal in which you say you felt that Watergate was “just as seismic”—those were your words—as 9/11.
HPR: Do you think the impacts of Watergate, in particular the long-term impacts, have been as manifest as those of 9/11?
TD: You had to be there to know just how profound it was. I mean, what Nixon defenders used to say—“Nobody died at Watergate”—was a way of them sticking it to Ted Kennedy. In the grand scheme of things, obviously the loss of three thousand Americans in a single day in a terror attack is seismic. But in its own day, Watergate was, for different reasons and without the loss of life, really seismic. Dick Cheney was right that it was the greatest crisis—constitutional crisis—since the Civil War. And you had to live there to know just how poisonous the atmosphere was.
I always tell the story that, for weeks before Nixon resigned, anti-Nixon protesters had set up shop in Lafayette Park, across Pennsylvania Avenue. In those days, Pennsylvania Avenue was a main east-west artery. It’s been closed for twenty-five years now. In those days, you had tens of thousands of cars going east and west in front of the White House. These protesters had these big signs that they would hold up, and the signs said, “Honk if you think he’s guilty.” And my enduring memory of Watergate is going into the White House day after day, morning, noon, evening, hearing the horns honk.
And on Friday, August ninth, which was the day that Nixon resigned, the horns stopped.
HPR: Can you talk a little bit about the press’s reaction to the Saturday Night Massacre?
TD: I think that was a tripwire. I got scrambled over to the special prosecutor’s office at night—it was a Saturday night—and they were all locked up. Nobody was there, but I think that’s when reporters and politicians began to believe that Nixon had something to hide. I’ve always said that rule number one in damage control, which I learned in Watergate, is “If you don’t have anything to hide, don’t behave like you do.” And all of a sudden, you had Nixon ordering his attorney general to fire the special prosecutor. Elliot Richardson refuses and resigns. Bill Ruckelshaus refuses and resigns. Bob Bork, solicitor general, fires [Archibald] Cox. At that point, I think there was… As I said, it was a tripwire. Politicians and reporters said you don’t do things like this without there being real, criminal vulnerability. So, I think that was the beginning of the end. Because the end was when the Supreme Court said you had to release these tapes.
HPR: Nixon also threatened to surround the White House with marines. How did the public respond?
TD: I think at this point, Nixon looked like a trapped animal, just flailing, trying to come up with something that would stick—that would resonate with people. But at that point, I think after the Saturday Night Massacre his support just continued to wane. That’s the kind of thing you do in a police state, and I don’t think anybody took it seriously. It was not a leading indicator for Nixon, that’s for sure. And at that point, everything he did was not working.
HPR: What do we stand to learn from the monument of Watergate today?
TD: I think what we’ve learned is the cover-up is often worse than the original act. I always thought that if Nixon had just gone on TV and said “I made a grievous mistake, and I’m going to burn the tapes, now let’s move on,” he probably would’ve survived. Because this is basically a forgiving country. But, to stonewall all the way to the end, and when you get the end, there’s documentary evidence on some tape that he’s been lying from the start… You know that famous line where he said, “You know, we could raise the hush money. We could do that, but it would be wrong.” But he’d already raised the money. Quite extraordinary.
HPR: You mentioned in your speech at Ford’s ninetieth birthday—and today as well—that your years reporting on Ford were a “magical, mystical time.” How so?
TD: Well, I was 29 years old from a little town in Texas—Arlington, Texas, which is not little anymore, but it was then. I had always hoped that if I did a good job and I had a lot of luck I might be a reporter for the Houston Post or the Dallas Morning News. The Houston Post is gone, and here I am 47 years later, still doing what I always loved to do. But it was magical because running around the country with the vice president was something I’d never dreamed of being able to do. Not only did I run around the country with the vice president, but I ran around the country with presidents. I’d done a lot of travel with Nixon before Ford.
HPR: Did it feel magical in the moment, or is that hindsight?
TD: In hindsight, just being at the White House, reporting every day from the White House, traveling around with Ford, developing a relationship with Ford so that he agreed to let me interview him for 16 years off the record—because I promised him I wouldn’t print it until he was dead. I mean, these are things that never occurred to me growing up in Texas. I think the good fortune is even more magical in hindsight, but at the time, I was having the time of my life. Think about it: running around the country on a twin-engine jet with the guy that we knew would be the next president of the United States, getting invited to his house for all sorts of things—his son’s wedding. He liked reporters, and he liked the six of us who were on the airplane. That’ll never happen again. No reporter will ever have the access that I had to Ford after he left office, and I don’t think anybody will ever have the kind access the six of us had to him when he was vice president… That’s why they call them the good old days, because usually the good old days are gone.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Image source: Institute of Politics, Harvard University