“In President Ford, the world saw the best of America and America found a man whose character and leadership would bring calm and healing to one of the most divisive moments in our nation’s history.”
—President George W. Bush at the funeral of Gerald Ford, Jan. 2, 2007
“One of the most admirable public servants and human beings … an outstanding statesman … wisely chose the path of healing during a deeply divisive time”
—Former president Jimmy Carter, same event
Until a week ago, what many people knew about Gerald Ford—if they remembered him at all—was that he had
 President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (far left) at an arrival ceremony in Jarkarta with Indonesian dictator Suharto, Dec. 5, 1975. |
Ford was the only person to ascend to the presidency without having been elected as either president or vice-president. Ford, then the Republican House minority leader, was appointed in 1973 to replace Richard Nixon’s first vice president, Spiro Agnew. Agnew was forced out of office after pleading guilty to tax evasion.
After being defeated in the1976 election, Ford devoted most of the rest of his life to golf.
So, anyone paying attention in the past few days to the corporate media, whether television, radio or print, might be wondering what, exactly, was going on. There was not simply one funeral for Ford, but instead a three-part extravaganza—in Rancho Mirage, Calif., Washington, D.C., and Grand Rapids, Mich.
Virtually the entire ruling political establishment gathered at the National Cathedral in Washington on Jan. 2. Live coverage of the coffin being carried from site to site by multi-service color guards filled the airwaves for days.
Lengthy obituaries in leading newspapers like the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times were replete with descriptive words like, “healer,” “steady,” “kind and gentle,” “selfless and straightforward,” “innately decent,” “a great American” and so on.
Two words that did not appear in any of the obituaries or funeral speeches were “East Timor.”
Ford and genocide in East Timor
On Dec. 6, 1975, then-President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger met with Indonesia’s military ruler, General Suharto, in that country’s capital, Jakarta. A major topic of discussion was Indonesia’s plan to invade East Timor, a tiny island nation that had just gained independence after hundreds of years of Portuguese colonialism. The Timorese independence struggle was led by a progressive movement known as FRETILIN.
Ten years earlier, the U.S. CIA and Suharto had collaborated in crushing the powerful Communist Party of Indonesia, killing between one and two million people in the process. The two governments were committed to preventing a resurgence of leftist forces in the area, regardless of the cost in lives.
A memo declassified more than 25 years later contradicts the long-standing assertions by Kissinger and Ford that they had not discussed East Timor in that crucial meeting.
“We want your understanding,” Suharto told the U.S. leaders in regard to the invasion of East Timor, “if we deem it necessary to take rapid or drastic action.”
Ford replied, “We will understand and will not press you on the issue. We understand the problem and the intentions you have.”
Kissinger: “You appreciate that the use of U.S.-made arms could create problems. … It depends on how we construe it, whether it is in self-defense or (it) is a foreign operation. It is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly.”
According to an agreement between the U.S. government and Indonesia, U.S.-made weapons (which made up 90 percent of Indonesia’s armaments) were only supposed to be used for self-defense purposes. Kissinger’s suggested way around this problem was to “construe” that East Timor, population 800,000, threatened Indonesia, population over 100 million.
Kissinger wrapped the discussion by telling Suharto: “We would be able to influence the reaction in America if whatever happens happens after we return.” In other words, Kissinger was telling Suharto, “Don’t launch the invasion until we are out of Indonesian airspace.” (National Security Archive, George Washington University)
The invasion began the next day, Dec. 7, 1975. By that time, “the healer” and his Secretary of State were in Manila, toasting another repressive client regime, that of Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos. The people of the Philippines, a U.S. neo-colony, were then enduring the fourth year of brutal martial law.
The Indonesian army used tactics of massacre and starvation against the Timorese people. Over the next quarter-century of occupation, between one-quarter and one-third of East Timor’s population was wiped out, numbering at least 200,000 people. Although now an independent state, East Timor has not recovered from the immense damage inflicted by the U.S.-armed and -backed occupation.
Other ‘unmentionables’: Angola, Lebanon, Cuba, Operation Condor
Among the other omitted words in the extensive Ford obituaries are “Angola,” “Lebanon” and “Cuba.”
In late 1975, the CIA collaborated with the fascist apartheid regime in South Africa to invade Angola. Angola had been a
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While Ford administration officials denied that the United States was collaborating with the apartheid regime and directing the intervention in Angola, John Stockwell, the CIA agent in charge of the operation changed sides and exposed the truth. Stockwell’s book, “In Search of Enemies,” detailed the specifics of the operation.
The U.S. war against Angola was to last for another 20 years with hundreds of thousands killed and maimed. The Angola campaign aside, Ford was a staunch supporter of apartheid South Africa.
The Angolan struggle is universally regarded as one of the most important chapters of modern African history. That all the corporate media could simply excise this chapter from the Ford obituaries is the clearest evidence of the mainstream media’s role as propaganda organ of the ruling class.
Ford’s two-and-a-half year presidency also spanned the most critical period of the civil war in Lebanon. Washington did everything in its power to prevent the victory of the Lebanese National Movement/Palestine Liberation Organization progressive forces. The result was to prolong the war and the destruction of much of the country.
On Oct. 6, 1976, two CIA operatives, Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles carried out the bombing in mid-flight of a Cuban airliner over Barbados. All 73 people aboard were murdered. Other U.S.-supported attacks on Cuba, as well as the blockade, received strong support from the Ford regime, which included Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney as White House Chief of Staff and George Bush Sr. as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
In his speech appointing Bush Sr. on Jan. 30, 1976, Ford stated, “The United States is a peace-loving nation and our foreign policy is designed to lessen the threat of war as well as aggression.”
Ford, Kissinger and Bush were key backers of the military dictatorships that took power in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia and other South American countries in the1970s. Tens of thousands of labor unionists, political, community and women’s rights activists were killed, hundreds of thousands were imprisoned and tortured, and millions were driven into exile.
To track down, kidnap and kill surviving activists in exile, the CIA organized Operation Condor, together with counterrevolutionary Cubans and the intelligence services of the South American military regimes. Hundreds of activists were kidnapped and assassinated.
On Sept. 21, 1976, Orlando Letelier, former Chilean U.N. and U.S. ambassador during the progressive government of Salvador Allende (overthrown in 1973) was murdered in Washington, D.C. Letelier and his aide, Ronni Moffitt, were killed by a car bomb planted by right-wing Cuban and agents of the Chilean secret police.
Supporter of Vietnam War, enemy of people’s rights
Ford was an ardent supporter of the Vietnam War. In the late 1960s, when U.S. troops in Vietnam numbered more than 500,000, Ford attacked President Lyndon Johnson for not being aggressive enough in waging the war. As president, Ford tried to push through an emergency billion-dollar aid package, even as the rotten south Vietnamese puppet government was collapsing in 1975.
On the home front, Ford, a violent anti-communist from the time of his youth, was an unrelenting enemy of the labor movement, of expanding civil and voting rights and women’s reproductive rights, and all anti-poverty programs. By the time he became president, the power of the people’s movement had forced him, like Nixon, to accept some reforms.
Just a glance at a few of his legislative stands is revealing. In 1961, he opposed housing assistance for working-class families. In 1965, he voted against the creation of Medicare. In the late 1960s, he collaborated with Nixon in a failed attempt to undermine the Voting Rights Act.
And, in 1970, he introduced articles of impeachment, seeking to remove Justice William O. Douglas from the Supreme Court. Ford and his fellow reactionaries considered Douglas “too liberal.” That effort, too, failed.
Why honor Ford upon his death?
First and foremost, Ford was a loyal political servant of big capital, as his record indicates. In coalition with the powerful Rockefeller wing of the ruling class, Ford became president at a time of multiple crises for U.S. imperialism. As part of the deal, Nelson Rockefeller was appointed Vice President and Kissinger stayed on to run foreign policy.
The year 1974 was a time of unfolding defeat in Vietnam, the Watergate scandal and the deepest economic crisis since the 1930s. The potential for the crisis to deepen significantly was very real, but it did not. For that, the ruling elite credits Ford to some extent. Thus, the “healer” label.
But the posthumous glorification of Ford is not so much motivated by the past as by the present. The current administration is the most detested since Nixon’s second term. Large and growing sections of the population regard Bush and his gang with contempt.
The ruling class does not care much about what happens to Bush as an individual of course, especially given the failed war in Iraq. But they do not want the presidency as an institution to be tarnished or damaged. The executive branch is the key and most powerful instrument of rule for the military-industrial complex, the oil monopolies and big banks—the core of power in the U.S. capitalist system.
The real aim of Ford’s royal send-off is to elevate the image of the system of capitalist oppression itself.
