Is the Pardon Unpardonable?

To the Editors:

The Supreme Court was widely praised in the "tapes" case for its holding that no man was above the law. President Ford, with all good intentions and even with personal magnanimity, has dealt this principle a serious blow. What are we now to do about John Mitchell, who may have already suffered as much as Richard Nixon and is still being prosecuted, or with the other underlings who, as far as anyone can tell, really executed orders from above? This effort to heal the wounds of Watergate has inflamed the existing and far more serious wounds in the principle of equality before the law. Even if one decided to achieve some equality by pardoning all of those who are accused of doing the President's bidding, there stand thousands of others accused of criminality. They have also suffered, but they may differ from Richard Nixon primarily in more forthrightly acknowledging their guilt, as do most embezzlers, or in having acted out of conscience, as have many of our draft evaders. Presumably they, too, would be content with being judged by history if they were not prosecuted.

This affront to the sense of justice--and that is essentially what it is--is not, to be sure, fatal to our criminal-justice system. But this action certainly does add to the all too popular view that our criminal law is a mass of hypocrisies. It is interesting to note that California's Governor Ronald Reagan, who applauded the refusal to allow prosecution of Richard Nixon on the ground that "he has suffered as much as any man should," had two days earlier announced his intention to veto a bill lowering the possible penalty for possession of small amounts of marijuana from ten years' to six months' imprisonment. Is it any wonder that the poor, the ethnic minorities and the young, who are the real consumers of the criminal law, regard it as stacked in favor of the rich and powerful?

John Kaplan

Professor of Law

Stanford University

Palo Alto, Calif.

President Ford has insulted every law-abiding citizen of this country.

Muriel Swango

Quincy, III.

President Ford, by his unexpected action, has destroyed his own credibility.

In 1960, while I was Governor of California, I had a similar situation, which hurt me all the days of my governorship. I am referring to the case of Caryl Chessman.

Mr. Chessman had been convicted of raping two girls on two separate occasions at the point of a gun. As attorney general I had fought hard for affirmance of the conviction and the execution of Mr. Chessman. I then became Governor and was faced with a difficult problem--not of justice but of clemency (mercy). I felt Mr. Chessman was guilty, but that the death penalty was too severe because it had been so long delayed. On the very eve of his execution I granted a 60-day reprieve. This was attacked by almost every newspaper in the state of California. You would have thought I was guilty of the offenses rather than the person to whom I gave the reprieve. Wherever I went I was booed. I was in somewhat the same position in which President Ford now finds himself. My first year had been a great success and I enjoyed a high popularity rating in the polls. After this act of mercy, I never really recovered. I did defeat Richard Nixon in 1962, but if I had not commuted Mr. Chessman's sentence, I don't think Richard Nixon would ever have been a candidate against me.

Jerry Ford has unquestionably hurt himself with the American people. A great many think there might have been a deal, or if not a deal then his timing was so stupid and unintelligent that he hasn't got what it takes to be President. Whatever the situation, Ford has crossed the Rubicon as I did, and he will pay the heavy penalties of never regaining the popularity he had during the first weeks of his presidency.

Edmund G. Brown

Beverly Hills, Calif.

The final coverup.

W. Ward Fearnside

Wellesley Hills, Mass.

I'm satisfied that justice has been served. I have mixed emotions, but it is undoubtedly good for the country that we do not have to continue as a divided nation. History will take care of Nixon without a formal judicial finding. His Administration will go down as one of the worst in history because of corruption. The pardon of Nixon should be matched by the granting of unconditional amnesty to those who resisted service in the Viet Nam War. The young men who refused to take part in that war for reasons of conscience have an even higher right to amnesty and pardon than Nixon.

Joseph Crangle

Chairman

Democratic State Committee

Buffalo

America's greatest President was a man of compassion. A century later we have a new President who is also a man of compassion. Long after the vultures and biodegradables have departed, the pardon of Richard Nixon by President Ford will go down in history as the mark of a man who is both courageous and decisive.

A.E. Alexander, M.D.

New York City

Justice may certainly be tempered by mercy, but there can be no such thing as mercy until justice has been accomplished by the courts. Since it circumvented justice, Mr. Ford's act was merely indulgent favoritism, a bland and unworthy substitute for mercy. Real mercy could have modified Richard Nixon's legal fate, but it would not have shielded him from the law and his responsibility to disclose the truth.

Particularly troubling to me as a Christian is the fact that President Ford appeals to his conscience "as a humble servant of God" in granting this pardon. Unlike Mr. Ford, I serve a God who is a God of justice as well as a God of mercy. By him, kings and paupers shall one day be judged alike.

With Mr. Nixon irrevocably pardoned, the moral basis for pursuing his co-conspirators is undermined, and the cases themselves are jeopardized. The Executive Branch has rendered the Judicial Branch incapable of performing its proper function under the law. So it remains for Congress to overrule the President, reopen the impeachment probe and thus resolve the question of Richard Nixon's culpability.

James D. Denney

Paramus, N.J.

I nominate J.F. terHorst for Man of the Year.

Jack Gaines

Stinson Beach, Calif.

Wait for Big Brother

The economic situation is extremely serious, but it would appear that we are to be encouraged to curse the darkness and to wait for Big Brother, the Administration, to act on inflation. My firm's management surveys indicate a self-admitted average of 25% nonproductive time amongst managers in industry. As a nation, we lose $16 billion to theft alone--three times the proposed cut in defense spending. However, we can depend on our Government to take care of us--perhaps as it has taken care of the original Americans, the Indians.

Before we end up on a reservation with handouts of corn, let's get off our individual backsides and go to work. Increased productivity would give us needed cash, jobs and lower prices. We need positive, individual leadership, by example, from company presidents, union leaders and, yes, the media.

William B. Gerraughty

North Andover, Mass.

The easiest way to combat inflationary food prices is to apply the old maxim: no ifs, no ands, no Butz...

Clifford M. Crist

Houston

I fully agree that President Ford is earnest in his intentions of holding down federal spending, as is evidenced by his veto of a $47 million health research program. However, in his zeal to instill a "sense of self-sacrifice," Mr. Ford may have overlooked the fact that some people may not have that much to "sacrifice"--especially those whom the health research program was designed to help.

J.A. Aaron

Los Angeles

What Did They Say?

In your issue of Sept. 9, your book review of Carl Solberg's Riding High gives new currency to the false statement that Truman said that "the whole world should adopt the American system." Truman never said anything of the sort. That is a fabrication by Noam Chomsky in his book American Power and the New Mandarins.

Chomsky claimed in a footnote that Truman had said it in a speech given at Baylor University in 1947. An examination of the Baylor speech shows that Truman did not say it or anything like it. The Chomsky invention has been repeatedly exposed.

Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

New York City

The Mexican Reality

Mexico continues to be an island of stability, and not only in Latin America. Regard your own circumstances: in eleven years, one President assassinated, countless riots, assaults and kidnapings, a long and unjust war waged against the will of the people, the highest officials of the Executive Branch on trial, and political scandal as a way of life. The "island of stability" to which your article refers prevails throughout the Western Hemisphere.

It is an outrageous lie to say that our country is in a "state of semi-siege," although TIME'S tendentiousness should no longer surprise us.

We have no more or fewer problems than those of any other country in the turbulent world of our times, but we do have a stable government and a firm purpose: to overcome, by democratic means, the obstacles arising from every process of development.

Fausto Zapata

Assistant Secretary of the Presidency

Mexico City

Directive No. 1

I quote:

"If other measures prove unsuccessful, I intend to invade ... with armed forces to establish constitutional conditions and to prevent further outrages against the minority ... population.

"The behavior of the troops must give the impression that we do not want to wage war against our ... brothers. Therefore, any provocation is to be avoided. If, however, resistance is offered it must be broken ruthlessly."

Buelent Ecevit, prior to the Turkish invasion of Cyprus? No. Adolf Hitler's famous Directive No. 1, prior to the annexation of Austria in 1938.

Alkis C. Joannides

Nicosia, Cyprus

The Gray Zone

Regarding your "map" of the world's atomic resources, I was at first annoyed that TIME did not feel that Canada deserved to be in the "pink" as a potential nuclear power; our scientific expertise is known round the world.

On second thought, I'm proud to be in the gray zone. Who the hell wants to be known for potential nuclear capabilities!

Gerry Harris

Toronto

Second Best

Regarding Stefan Kanfer's views on our book The Best, may we borrow The Best Put-Down of a Critic (page 92):

"I am sitting in the smallest room in my house. I have your review in front of me. Soon it will be behind me."

Peter Passell

Leonard Ross

New York City

Among whatever other problems The Best may have, the book's Best Exit Line is a misquotation set in the wrong locale at the wrong time, which must set some sort of Best Record for Most Errors in Shortest Space.

What former Vice President Alben W. Barkley said was, "I would rather be a servant in the house of the Lord than sit in the seats of the mighty." He made the remark at the 1956 mock Democratic National Convention at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, which, despite the Best Efforts of the two Columbia professors, remains in Virginia, not Kentucky.

I am unlikely to forget the event. As a journalism student at W. and L. and an assistant in its public relations office, I spent the next three sleepless days trying to convince various publications that Mr. Barkley had used the plural "seats" and had not, therefore, arbitrarily rejected a nomination to be God.

Lloyd Dobyns

Correspondent

NBC News

Paris

Heroes from Another Time

Having grown up in an age in which my own heroes were brutally assassinated, I was fascinated by one who did triumph and endure: Charles Lindbergh. This worshipful interest has recently been deepened by Anne Morrow Lindbergh's published diaries and letters. I chafe at your casual supposition that my generation cannot "fully appreciate" Lindbergh. Perhaps, having no heroes of our own time, we value more dearly those of another.

Linda L. Pittman

Cincinnati I can never quite consider as a "hero" any man who accepted a German decoration from Hermann Goering, Hitler's ruthless crony. The true heroes were the boys who died fighting the Nazi beasts and never received publicity or parades. To me Charles Lindbergh will never typify a hero.

Barbara Nilva

St. Louis Park, Minn.

Sympathetic Vibrations

Your review of Carrying the Fire by Mike Collins refers to his vision of a spacecraft with a crew of women with bobbing breasts. I have beaten Astronaut-Author Collins to the NASA SUTRA. The opening of chapter 11 of my Rendezvous with Rama reads:

"Some women, Commander Norton had decided long ago, should not be allowed aboard ship; weightlessness did things to their breasts that were too damn distracting. It was bad enough when they were motionless; but when they started to move, and sympathetic vibrations set in, it was more than any warm-blooded male should be asked to take. He was quite sure that at least one serious space accident had been caused by acute crew distraction, after the transit of an unholstered lady officer through the control cabin."

Arthur C. Clarke

Colombo, Sri Lanka

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