The Ford Tapes

Bob Woodward has released tapes of a 2004 interview with Gerald Ford in which the former president revealed that the invasion of Iraq was "a big mistake." Ford gave Woodward the interview on the condition that his comments not become public until after his death. Here are less-publicized excerpts from the Ford interview.

- "I wanted to call it, 'Beat Inflation into a Whimpering, Bloody Pulp and Roast Its Still-Beating Heart Over a Pile of Burning Horse Dung,' but the 'experts' had a better idea."

- "Estes Kefauver is a cocksucker, and you can quote me on that once I'm dead."

- "So we were lounging around the White House pool one afternoon and he [Kennedy] asked us if we'd ever 'taken a trip.' I thought he was asking if we wanted to check out the yacht, you know [laughs]. But I'm glad I did it. Acid opened some important doors for me, awakened me to my creative self. [inaudible] Yeah, like the single-bullet thing, very psychedelic. Arlen was the real guru on that, dude walked around for a year with pupils the size of exit wounds."

- "My first thought [on reading the transcripts] was, 'I thought Henry was Episcopalian.'"

- "Oh, I thought he [Suharto] said East Germany."

- "So I finally say to Hoover, 'Eddie, I'm not playing college football anymore. Would you kindly take your hand off my ass?"

- "I ran into Sammy Hagar once at a golf outing. I told him "You owe me, dude. 'I Can't Drive 70' would have been about as popular as the second Knack album."

- "It was our first February in the White House. I remember patting the bed, winking at Betty, undressing, and saying 'C'mon, honey. It's a President's Day mattress sale, and everything you see here is half off."

- "I invented the Internet."

- "They came to me first. But I said, if you really want someone who can't get it up, you should give Bob Dole a call. True story."

- Tim Willette, Rick Kaempfer

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For more continuing Beachwood coverage of Jerry Ford:
- James Brown vs. Jerry Ford
- Reality vs. Media Madness

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