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Earlier, on August 9th, Nixon had resigned as President, the first time in history that a sitting president had submitted his resignation. When Nixon's resignedation, Congress dropped its impeachment proceedings, but criminal prosecution was still a possibility. President Gerald Ford issued a full and unconditional pardon of President Nixon, immunizing him from prosecution for any crimes he had "committed or may have committed or taken part in" as president. In a televised broadcast to the nation, Ford explained that he felt the pardon was in the best interest of the country. He said that the Nixon family's situation "is an American tragedy in which we all have played a part. It could go on and on and on, or someone must write the end to it. I have concluded that only I can do that, and if I can, I must."
Nixon proclaimed his innocence until his death in 1994. In his official response to the pardon, he said that he "was wrong in not acting more decisively and more forthrightly in dealing with Watergate, particularly when it reached the stage of judicial proceedings and grew from a political scandal into a national tragedy."
Many pundits believe that pardoning Nixon contributed to President Ford's loss of the presidential election of 1976. Allegations were made about a secret deal between Nixon and Ford, promising a pardon in return for Nixon's resignation. To quash those rumours, Ford testified before the House Judiciary Committee on October 17, 1974.
In his autobiography A Time to Heal, Ford wrote about a meeting he had with Nixon's Chief of Staff, Alexander Haig. Haig told Ford that be believed that Nixon only had four options: (1) he could try to ride out the impeachment and fight against conviction in the Senate all the way, (2) he could resign, or (3) he could delay his resignation until further along in the impeachment process to try and settle for a censure vote in Congress, or (4) he could pardon himself and then resign. Haig told Ford that some of Nixon's staff suggested that Nixon could agree to resign in return for an agreement that Ford would pardon him. Ford wrote:
"Haig emphasized that these weren't his suggestions. He didn't identify the staff members and he made it very clear that he wasn't recommending any one option over another. What he wanted to know was whether or not my overall assessment of the situation agreed with his.[emphasis in original]… Next he asked if I had any suggestions as to courses of actions for the President. I didn't think it would be proper for me to make any recommendations at all, and I told him so."
The pardon was extremely controversial. Critics called it a "corrupt bargain" and claimed Ford's pardon was granted in exchange for Nixon's resignation that elevated Ford to the Presidency. In an editorial at the time, The New York Times stated that the Nixon pardon was "a profoundly unwise, divisive and unjust act" that in a stroke had destroyed the new president's "credibility as a man of judgment, candor and competence". Ford's first press secretary and close friend Jerald Franklin terHorst resigned his post in protest after the pardon.
In 2001, the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation awarded the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award to Ford for his pardon of Nixon. In presenting the award to Ford, Senator Ted Kennedy said that he had initially been opposed to the pardon of Nixon, but later stated that history had proved Ford to have made the correct decision.
Following is a YouTube video of Ford's speech to the nation announcing the Nixon pardon: