JAMES M. CANNON RESEARCH INTERVIEWS AND NOTES, 1989-94

James M. Cannon, who worked for many years as a journalist and aide to Nelson Rockefeller, joined the Ford White House staff as Executive Director of the Domestic Council in February 1975 and served until the end of the Ford administration.  Many years later he approached President Ford with a plan to write a book about the President’s life and career.  That project resulted in the publication of Time and Chance:  Gerald Ford’s Appointment with History (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), with a projected second volume.

This collection documents some of Mr. Cannon’s work in planning and researching the book.  It contains tapes and transcripts for interviews he conducted with President Ford and many others along with Cannon’s notes on other sources (especially the 1977 interviews with President Ford conducted by Trevor Armbrister).  It also includes some lengthy letters written to Cannon by Presidents Ford and Nixon.  For the Ford interviews, each folder contains both the rough transcripts created by Mr. Cannon and full transcripts created by the staff of the Ford Library.

The interviews conducted with President Ford by Mr. Cannon concern all phases of his life from his childhood through the Presidency and even touch on the 1980 presidential campaign.  Perhaps due to the fact that the book does not cover most of the Ford Presidency, these interviews deal only with a limited number of topics from the White House years – mostly the transition, the Nixon Pardon, and some aspects of the 1976 presidential campaign.  There is extensive discussion on many earlier aspects of Ford’s life and career, however.  The interviews concern his parents, his stepfather, elementary school, high school, University of Michigan, Yale University, his girlfriend Phyllis Brown, his work as an attorney, his World War II experiences, the 1948 congressional campaign, work on the House Appropriations Committee, the Fords’ homes in Grand Rapids and Washington, the Warren Commission, election as Minority Leader, the attempt to impeach Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, Watergate and the Nixon impeachment, and the resignation of Spiro Agnew as Vice President and the appointment of Ford to replace him.  Any individual interview many discuss a number of these topics in no special order, so it may be necessary to examine portions of several different interviews to see all of the information on any one topic.

Cannon’s research notes on other sources are ones that he took while researching Time and Chance.  One major resource that he used was the 3641 pages of interviews with Ford conducted by Trevor Armbrister in 1977 to assist with the writing of President Ford’s memoir A Time to Heal.  Although Cannon’s notes include frequent short quotations from the Armbrister interviews, they serve primarily as an index to them.  Therefore these notes contain nowhere near the level of detail that appears in the complete Armbrister-Ford interviews (which are not included in this collection).  Other Cannon notes concern both additional sources and notes to himself about plans for researching and writing the book.

The Library staff has opened Cannon’s research notes, Cannon rough interview transcripts, Cannon’s interview audiotapes, and the Library-created complete transcripts of the Gerald Ford interviews.  Many audiotapes are still closed to research (see list in Appendix A).  The Library staff hopes to begin reviewing, transcribing and opening other tapes as time permits.

November 2010 Opening of Interviews
The Library staff finished transcription and editing work on 29 additional interviews in November 2010.  Four of the newly opened interviews focus in part or in whole on President Ford’s early life or personal relationships: Phyllis Brown, Philip Buchen, John Hersey, and Bill & Peggy Whyte.  Four focus in part of in whole on his Congressional career: Robert Hartmann, Mildred Leonard, John Rhodes, and Gordon Vander Till.

Many interviews focus on the period from October 1973 to December 1974 including Gerald Ford’s nomination and confirmation as Vice President, Watergate, Nixon impeachment, Nixon Pardon, and Nelson Rockefeller’s nomination and confirmation as Vice President.  Quite a few of these interviews are with members of Congress: Carl Albert, Howard Cannon, Hamilton Fish, Barry Goldwater, Mike Mansfield, and Charles Wiggins.  Others are with White House staff members: Philip Buchen, Alexander Haig, Robert Hartmann, and William Seidman.

A few of the interviews have other fairly specific focuses:  Michael Deaver (1976 Reagan campaign), Andrew Goodpaster (Chief of Staff system), Richard Helms (CIA), Edward Levi (Department of Justice), Arthur Quern (Domestic Council), and Peter Rodman (Henry Kissinger/National Security Council).

Related Materials (January 2008)
In addition to this collection, the Ford Library has both the James Cannon Files (part of President Ford’s donation of working files of White House staff members) and the James Cannon Papers (donated to the Library by Mr. Cannon).  Both collections focus primarily on Mr. Cannon’s role as Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs and Executive Director of the Domestic Council from 1975 to 1977.  Neither collection contains materials directly related to his book on President Ford.

Although President Ford made available to Mr. Cannon the extensive transcripts from the 1977 interviews used in the writing of his memoir A Time to Heal, those transcripts are not currently open to research.