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President Gerald Ford believed he did the right thing when in 1974 he pardoned his predecessor, Richard Nixon, of any criminality connected to the cover-up of the Watergate scandal that had forced Nixon to be the first (and to date, only) president to resign from office.
Like many Americans at the time, I was furious at Ford for preempting what surely would have been an indictment for obstruction of justice and related crimes, and I was convinced there had been some secret deal to let Nixon get away with crimes that sent others in his administration to prison. Nixon should have been prosecuted, not pardoned.