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| Former U.S. President Gerald Ford dies |
| Washington, 27.12.2006 |
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| The U.S. flag flies at half staff over the White House in memory of former President Gerald Ford December 27, 2006. Ford, the 38th President of the U.S., died at his home in California on Tuesday at age 93.
REUTERS
LOS ANGELES (AFP) - Former president Gerald Ford, who sought to heal the United States after the trauma of the Watergate scandal that forced Richard Nixon from office in 1974, died late Tuesday at the age of 93.
Flags flew at half mast, and tributes poured in for the unassuming politician who rose to the presidency without winning a national election, and closed the book on Watergate with a controversial pardon of Nixon.
President George W. Bush hailed Ford's "strong and steady" leadership from 1974 to 1977 during a "period of great division and turmoil" following disclosure of the Nixon administration's widespread political intrigue and cover-up.
"For a nation that needed healing ... Gerald Ford came along when we needed him most," Bush said in brief remarks televised across the nation Wednesday.
His wife of 58 years, Betty Ford, said in a brief statement announcing his death that her husband, who became the longest living US president last month, had lived a life filled by "God, family and his country."
Richard Nixon(L) and Gerald Ford
©AFP/NATIONAL ARCHIVES/File"My family joins me in sharing the difficult news that Gerald Ford, our beloved husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather has passed away at 93 years of age," the former first lady said in the statement released late Tuesday by Ford's office in Rancho Mirage, California.
"His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country," the statement added.
Flags on official buildings across the United States were to be flown at half-mast in tribute to the former president, who is survived by Betty Ford and the couple's four children.
He was perhaps best known for a single act in the first weeks of his presidency, when he outraged many Americans by issuing the disgraced Nixon "a full, free and absolute pardon" on September 8, 1974.
That decision -- which saved Nixon from prosecution and possibly time in prison -- overshadowed Ford's presidency and would be debated for years.
(L-R) George G. Bush, Gerald Ford and Betty Ford
©AFP/File - Mandel NganIn August 1999, however, Ford received the Medal of Freedom, the highest US civilian award for his post-Watergate efforts in helping to knit the country together.
Ford will be remembered "as someone who scored confidence in the presidency when it was in doubt," said presidential scholar Michael Beschloss, speaking Wednesday on NBC television.
His family said Ford died peacefully at 6:45 pm (0345 GMT Wednesday) at his Rancho Mirage home. Funeral services are to be held in Washington D.C. and Grand Rapids, Michigan -- a district he represented for years in the US Congress -- with details to be announced at a briefing Wednesday.
Ford served as president after Nixon quit the White House in shame in August 1974, after exposure of a plot to spy on opponents following a bungled break-in at the Democratic party offices in the Watergate building in the US capital.
The longtime Republican lost the 1976 election campaign to Democrat Jimmy Carter, a defeat that historians have attributed to his decision to pardon Nixon.
Gerald Ford and Betty Ford
©AFP/Ford LibraryCondolences came in from Vice President Richard Cheney -- Ford's former White House chief of staff -- former first lady Nancy Reagan, and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
An amiable and respected Republican representative from Michigan with a reputation for loyalty, Ford became vice-president in 1973 replacing Spiro Agnew, who battled charges of conspiracy, extortion and bribery.
Even then, it was clear Nixon himself could be forced out by the cover-up over the Watergate break-in.
Once Nixon became the only US president ever to resign office on August 8, 1974, Ford told the nation when he took the oath of office the following day as the 38th president that he faced the task of healing "the internal wounds of Watergate."
"Our long national nightmare is over," he said. "Our constitution works. Our great republic is a government of laws and not of men."
Before Democrat Jimmy Carter defeated him in the 1976 election, Ford cut government spending to fight inflation, recession and unemployment stemming from a sharp rise in oil prices.
Ford was president in April 1975 when the last US troops, diplomats and Vietnamese supporters were flown in helicopters from the rooftop of the US embassy in Saigon to US naval ships, marking the end of the US intervention in Vietnam.
Twice in 1975, assassins tried to kill Ford. Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a follower of cult leader Charles Manson, was arrested for pointing a loaded pistol at him while he was in Florida.
Seventeen days later, Sara Jane Moore, a would-be revolutionary, tried to shoot him in California. Both attackers are serving life sentences.
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