First Published: People’s Tribune, Vol. 1, No. 1, September 1974.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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Before the foul stench of Watergate has cleared the air, President Ford has pardoned the prime scoundrel in that affair – Dick Nixon. Ford has pardoned a man guilty of breaking and entering, robbery, tax evasion, mass murder and mutilation in Southeast Asia, murder and torture in Chile (and throughout Latin America), conspiring with South African military leaders to commit murder, in short, a record that would have made Hitler turn pale in terror!
Workers throughout the USNA are expressing their bitter indignation at the pardon of Nixon. We must organize and articulate this indignation of the working class and lead in the demand for new elections. The pardon of such a scoundrel must be seen as an indictment of the workers and toilers, and all who cherish democracy.
Why is Ford, as was Nixon, fighting to maintain the “Watergate cover-up” at the expense of personal and Republican Party “popularity”? Because Ford, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party as well, are but tools of the imperialists, whose most reactionary, chauvinistic elements are launching a drive to fascism. Through the “cover-up” they hope to keep the people of the USNA ignorant of this inhuman offensive. In pardoning Nixon, it becomes more obvious that Ford’s principle allegiance is not to any political party, but to the interests of finance capital.
While giving the proven criminal Nixon a full pardon, those who fled the country to avoid forced military service were slapped with a sham “conditional amnesty”. Under this “conditional amnesty” One faces the grim choice of either submitting to two years of “alternative service” to be followed by a “clemency discharge”, or else, being branded indefinitely with an “undesirable discharge”, which would make finding a job almost impossible.
In addition to the pardon of bloody Nixon, Ford is taking other steps in advancing the drive toward the nightmare of fascist military rule at home, and preparing for war abroad. Ford has used his power as Commander in Chief to reinstate White House Chief of Staff Alexander Haig Jr., as not only an army general, but “supreme commander” of NATO and the 300,000 man USNA armed force stationed in Europe.
Haig moved from colonel in 1969 to four-star general in 1972 (jumping over at least 243 senior army generals) without holding a military job. During that time he was assistant to Kissinger on the National Security Council staff in the White House. The ascendance of Haig in the political arena reflects the tightening stranglehold of the fascist oriented military on the governmental bureaucracy. In fact, “For most of the final Nixon year, as Haig himself would agree, he was the acting president of the United States.”[1]
Forging ahead in the drive toward fascism, Ford has placed the vice presidency in the hands of one of the most brutal, imperialistic elements of finance capital-billionaire Nelson Rockefeller. “He is a member of the politburo of a government of private capital within the governmental structure of the United States.”[2]
Rockefeller is part of the awesome imperialist grouping that has its hand in the working of governments throughout the capitalist world, that is directly responsible for the misery and suffering of the majority of the colonial world. From their Anaconda Copper mines in Chile to their Exxon petroleum sources in the Middle East, the Rockefellers have proven beyond question that they will murder any force that threatens their imperialist holdings.
This September marks three years since 2000 inmates at New York state’s Attica Prison – Negro national minority, Latin American, and Anglo-American – stood together demanding better conditions and decent treatment. Under the direction of Nelson Rockefeller these demands were met with a fury of bullets by New York state troopers which left 43 dead.
We must rally the workers in our shops and communities in boldly opposing the takeover of government by a military hierarchy that has proven itself on all continents to be the executioner of democracy and freedom loving people.
From the shops, mills, mines, docks, farms and streets must spring the voice of the proletarian vanguard demanding new elections!
[1] Chicago Tribune, 9/15/74.
[2] Chicago Sun Times, 9/8/74.