ford then gets another phone call from alexander haig, and he said, mr. ford, i need to see you, and you cannot bring bob hartman with you. ford goes back to hague's office, and hague shares with gerald ford the contents of the smoking gun conversation, from 1972, where richard nixon tells bob haldeman on the tape, another story, tells bob haldeman on tape that he is to stop the cia investigation of watergate. it is an obstruction of justice, and nixon was guilty of it. end of that story. ford sees the transcript and knows that nixon has to resign. both hague and ford, mr. vice president, are you willing and able to take over the office of presidency of the united states at a moments notice, and ford said, yes, i am, and then hague said, but wait a minute. i am prepared to talk to you about a list of options. these options can take place if you choose to add president. one of them is, as hague says to ford, the option of pardoning the president. ford does nothing. in fact, he leaves hague with the feeling that perhaps he is considering it. he leaves the m

alexander haig, not surprisingly, said, do it now. now?an and bukin, why he hasn't been charged with a crime. how can you constitutionally pardon someone who has not been charged with anything? , do you marsh says really think this is the right thing to do? said a thousand angels dancing on the head of it pin could not convince me it was right as long as i thought it was right. their heads.shook he had his consensus. he was going to pardon richard nixon. and then the question was how and when. one of the key players in what was going to happen for the next 48 hours was benson backer. did some work for ford when he was majority leader, was close to fill buikin. bukin says you have to look to see if it is legal for president of the united states to pardon before indictment. becker did not need to be told what this was all about. he goes home for the weekend, and then he writes the thickest memo i have ever read in a presidential library. and andto the essentially says, you can do it. there is no limit to the presidential pardoning power. you

. >> one was in the newspaper, september 10, after the pardon, there is a reference to alexander haig, and then after that, alexander haig with nato, and then the other one you mentioned was that george bush and leon jaworski had a relationship, and i wonder how those things played out. >> i do not know, but because of texas politics and houston politics, they knew each other, and i have seen correspondence, most of it not germane, at the bush library. as far as alexander haig being farmed out to nato, ford, too late, decides he has to have his own administration and starts moving out the members of the nixon administration. who do we get in? we get in as chief of staff the former congressman from illinois, donald rumsfeld, who brings in with him a completely unknown kid from wyoming as his assistant chief of staff, dick cheney. you have got ford being brought in at the cia. by the way, they call it "the ford foundation," because so many of these people are going to go and work in some shape or form for ronald reagan or george bush, and they learned their craft under president ford. >

kissinger didn't blame negroponte for these disclosures because they obviously came from alexander haig. but later on about a year later, kissinger -- negroponte gave an interview in the new your times which wasn't published until a year after that, until roughly 1974. and that interview was sort of the last straw in the relationship between kissinger and negroponte. negroponte didn't want to work for kissinger any longer, and he asked for reassignment, and he was reassigned. he was just told to take pop lock in the foreign service for and he went from being -- potluck. he went from being ahead of it not just at the state department of the age of about 34 deal with the most serious of foreign policy problems. and instead found itself the number three man in quito ecuador for the most these problems involved conflicts over tuna fishing. he made a success of its tenure and ecuador because he rather rapidly decided that the south american countries that wanted wider fishing limits, wider powers of regulation over coastal fisheries were basically right. what had happened until that time was

alexander haig, officer, cq minded person, also a friend of israel.ultz, one of my favorite, a friend, he contribute to our economy, free trade on the strategical -- and then israel, three prime ministers -- for the first six years. then for a year, for less than a year, there is. also different people was privilege to walk with all of them. and the two foreign ministers, and he -- i'm sorry sam didn't finish his memoirs. maybe they're still a chance because if you go on the web and you see interview with jessup, mr. jessup, 400 pages, fascinating interview which just needs a little bit of editing to become a book. any case, i think sam was not perfect because he was critical of the role of lawyers in the negotiations. i come from a professional guild, and i reject that. but seriously speaking, the role of lawyers, every country wants the agreement, it makes find to be professional, and we, you know, both legalistic societies that do appreciate the role of law but the rule of law is also, you know, one of our sages, problems, they say you should pray

as far as alexander haig being farmed out to nato, ford, too late, decides he has to have his own administration and starts moving out the members of the nixon administration. who do we get in? we get in as chief of staff the former congressman from illinois, donald rumsfeld, who brings in with him a completely unknown kid from wyoming as his assistant chief of staff, dick cheney. you have got ford being brought in at the cia. by the way, they call it the ford foundation, because so many of these people are going to go and work in some shape or form for ronald reagan or george bush, and they learned their craft under president ford. but i appreciate that. >> thank you. yes. >> spiro agnew has to resign. >> indeed, he did. >> who championed jerry ford to be vice president? >> excellent question, because the list is actually very long. the first person who championed him was melvin laird, who was a congressman from michigan and nixon's secretary of defense. he knew jerry ford very well, and, by the way, this entire list, everything they say to nixon is the same thing. he will be confirmed, because