Former United States President Gerald Ford (right) is pictured with Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld (left) at the Oval Office in this September 29, 1974 file photo. Ford, 93, died on Tuesday. - Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters):

Former President Gerald Ford told an interviewer last year he pardoned Richard Nixon in part to spare his friend the stigma of a criminal conviction for the Watergate cover-up, the Washington Post reported yesterday.

The explanation goes beyond Ford's previous insistence that he issued the pardon to move the United States beyond the partisan divisions of Watergate.

"I looked upon him as my personal friend. And I had no hesitancy about granting the pardon because I felt that we had this relationship and I didn't want to see my real friend have the stigma," Ford, who died on Tuesday at age 93, told journalist Bob Woodward in a 2005 interview.

Ford had long said he pardoned Nixon because he wanted to mend the divisions of Watergate. In his speech announcing the pardon, he acknowledged his friendship with Nixon but said his concern was for the country and not personal sympathy for the disgraced former U.S. leader.

Woodward was one of the Post reporters who unraveled the Watergate affair after operatives with Republican Party ties broke into the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the riverside Watergate hotel and office complex in 1972.

Nixon, facing impeachment for trying to cover up the affair, ultimately resigned and handed over power to Gerald Ford, whom he had appointed to the vice presidency following Spiro Agnew's resignation in October 1973.