Here's another piece about Gerald Ford and his pardoning of Richard Nixon. This article by Douglas Brinkley says that the two men had a closer relationship than has previously been reported.
There's one thing that I'm skeptical about in all these discussions. Ford is continually quoted as saying that he didn't expect the strong negative reaction that the public had to the pardon. Well, maybe. But he knew it was going to be unpopular. He announced it without much advance fanfare on a Sunday morning…a good time to make an announcement that you don't want to have get a lot of attention.