Ford cited friendship in Nixon pardon - newspaper

WASHINGTON, Dec 30 (Reuters) Memorial services for former President Gerald Ford began as a newly published interview he gave The Washington Post suggested he pardoned Richard Nixon partly to spare his friend the stigma of a criminal conviction over Watergate.

Ford's relatives and close friends gathered in Palm Desert, California, yesterday for a private prayer service and visitation at the church the former president attended for the last three decades of his life. Ford died on Tuesday at age 93.

A casket carrying Ford's remains was carried up the steps of St Margaret's Episcopal Church where his widow, Betty Ford, and his children and grandchildren gathered. They were joined about an hour later by some 300 invited guests.

Ford was expected to lie in repose overnight at the church, attended by a US military honor guard, to allow members of the desert community, where Ford had retired, to pay their final respects.

Today, Ford's remains will be flown to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland and then taken to Washington where his casket will lie in state at the Capitol. A service will be held at the National Cathedral on Tuesday at which President George W Bush will speak.

In his 2005 interview with the Post, Ford went beyond his previous insistence he pardoned Nixon to move the United States beyond the partisan divisions of Watergate.

Nixon, facing impeachment for trying to cover up the scandal, ultimately resigned and handed over power to Ford, whom he had appointed to the vice presidency following Spiro Agnew's resignation in October 1973.

STRONG FRIENDS ''I looked upon him as my personal friend. And I had no hesitancy about granting the pardon because I felt that we had this relationship and I didn't want to see my real friend have the stigma,'' Ford told journalist Bob Woodward in the interview.

Ford had long said he pardoned Nixon because he wanted to mend the divisions of Watergate. In his speech announcing the pardon, he acknowledged his friendship with Nixon but said his concern was for the country and not personal sympathy for the disgraced former US leader.

Woodward was one of the Post reporters who unraveled the Watergate affair after operatives with Republican Party ties broke into the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate hotel and office complex in 1972.

The Post reported yesterday that Nixon and Ford had been strong friends long before Nixon named Ford vice president.

In an earlier interview reported by the Post on Thursday, Ford criticized the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq. Many of those involved in Iraq war decision-making were members of Ford's inner circle.

Bush's first defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, worked as Ford's chief of staff and later defense secretary. Dick Cheney, now vice president, became Ford's chief of staff when Rumsfeld moved to defense.

''Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction,'' Ford said in the interviews.

Cheney and others figure prominently in memorial services for the former president. The vice president will serve as an honorary pallbearer this week and next, will deliver a eulogy at the US Capitol today and will attend a funeral on Wednesday in Michigan.

Reuters AB GC0946