The American Jewish Congress and the Workmen’s Circle have sharply criticized President Ford’s unconditional pardon of former President Nixon. William Stern. executive director of the Workmen’s Circle, expressed outrage at the action. In a letter to Ford. Stern declared that the “essential search for truth” in the Watergate affair “has been sabotaged by your unfortunate pardon of President Nixon.”
The letter stated that in accepting “a fainthearted, insincere declaration of contrition in return for a halt to further prosecution, we feel you have acknowledged a double standard of justice in our nation.” In addition, the letter continued, a pardon “for crimes committed without probing into their nature and extent, a pardon which erases the opportunity to assay them juridically, is, in our opinion, a demeaning of the sacred right of Presidential pardon.” Stern said the letter was written on behalf of the Workmen’s Circle’s 60,000 members.
The AJCongress, in a resolution adopted by its executive committee at its first meeting of the fall season, declared: “The American Jewish Congress deplores President Ford’s pardon of Richard M. Nixon prior to any judicial action as both unwise and unwarranted. In our judgement, the American people will correctly view the pardon as an act of special consideration available only to the powerful and well’connected.”
Last week Rabbi Alexander Schindler, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, said that Ford’s pardon “violates our sensibilities and is an affront to our sense of justice.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
