Jerry Ford: Squealing Rat Bastard

Besides his saying that the Iraq mess was a stupid mess, but not wanting his statement to get out until he was dead, turns out Nixon successor Ford was in bed w/ Gay Edgar Hoover & the FBI. Oh, wait, this is allegedly common knowledge. Maybe we even knew it, but it's been lost in the mental mess between our ears. (Too much madness, too many factoids.)

That Ford served as the FBI's eyes and ears inside the commission has been known for years. Long ago, the government released a 1963 FBI memo that said Mr. Ford, then a Republican congressman from Michigan, had volunteered to keep the FBI informed about the panel's private deliberations, but only if that relationship remained confidential. The bureau agreed.

The effing weasel "volunteered." What a sniveling toady. One can only wonder what the FBI did in exchange, other than what's been revealed.

Most of the newly disclosed documents describe the relationship between the FBI under Mr. Hoover and influential members of Congress or the judiciary once Mr. Hoover was convinced that they were allies.

Mr. Hoover rewarded Mr. Ford with personal notes that congratulated him on re-election and on awards, thanked Mr. Ford for publicly defending the bureau and expressed sympathy over the death of Mr. Ford's mother. In turn, Mr. Ford responded with private and public praise for Mr. Hoover and the FBI.

Like other friendly officials, Mr. Ford was granted favours. Some Mr. Ford sought: a photo of Hoover, background checks on a maid the Fords wanted to hire and on a man with a Swedish accent seeking public office in Mr. Ford's district but who had not answered all his neighbours' questions about his personal background. Others were surprise gifts, such as a signed copy of Mr. Hoover's book on communism.

Mr. Ford was elected to Congress in 1948. Mr. Hoover first congratulated him on his re-election in 1952 and thereafter. An internal FBI memo in 1965 said that, “though we did experience some difficulty with all the members of the Warren Commission, Ford was of considerable help to the Bureau.”

Many of the newly released records describe the bureau's controversial surveillance of anti-war and civil rights protesters as the FBI reported on plans for protest demonstrations at Ford's public appearances as a congressman, vice-president and president.

Two documents provide a rare glimpse of the depth of security fears during the Cold War:

A memo from Nov. 9, 1965, said the FBI performed a security check at Mr. Ford's request of telephones at his home in Virginia, his line at the phone company's central office and all points between. The FBI found no bugs, but a foreman said installation of new touch-tone dialling equipment in the area may have caused “some inadvertent noise on Mr. Ford's line.”

A memo from Dec. 2, 1959, showed the Navy was considering inviting Mr. Ford to a strategy conference at the Naval War College and asked the FBI – fully 11 years after Mr. Ford was first elected to Congress – whether Mr. Ford had any “subversive nature.” The famously tightlipped FBI had amassed a large file on Mr. Ford, but replied only that when Mr. Ford had applied to work for the FBI in 1942 its background investigation “revealed no pertinent derogatory information.”

What does this tell us about current "security fears," let alone suspicions that the gummint is tapping the lines of current members of Congrefs, keeping them from doing anything about the increasing revelations of criminal, anti-Constitutional activities of the Bush admin.? Paranoid? Maybe, but is there a better explanation? Except that the Democrats are cowardly political weasels, just like the creeps across the aisle.