U.S. President Gerald Ford is placed in the U.S. Capitol rotunda

The casket containing the body of former U.S. President Gerald Ford is placed in the U.S. Capitol rotunda where it will lie in state in Washington.


WASHINGTON - U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney hailed former U.S. President Gerald Ford at a state funeral on Saturday for pardoning Richard Nixon, his disgraced predecessor, and helping to heal the nation after the Watergate scandal.

Ford, the 38th president who died on Tuesday at age 93, steered the United States through "a crisis that could have turned to catastrophe," said Cheney, chief of staff in Ford's White House 30 years ago and an honorary pallbearer at the ceremony in the U.S. Capitol rotunda.

Ford held office for 2-1/2 years after Richard Nixon became the only president to resign. Nixon did so on August 9, 1974.

"In politics it can take a generation or more for a matter to settle, for tempers to cool," Cheney said. "We will never know what further unravelling, what greater malevolence might have come in that time of furies turned loose and hearts turned cold. But we do know this: America was spared the worst and this was the doing of an American president."

Ford's flag-draped casket was borne to the Capitol by motorcade after arriving at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. The casket was flown from California aboard a Boeing 747 from the presidential fleet.

A limousine bearing Ford's widow, Betty, 88, paused briefly en route to the Capitol at the World War Two memorial to mark his war-time service in the U.S. Navy.

He will lie in state until Tuesday, when Bush will eulogise him at another memorial service at the Washington National Cathedral. Burial is to be on Wednesday on a hillside at Ford's presidential library in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Absent were Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid and incoming House of Representatives' Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as well as Bill & Hillary Clinton and Jimmy & Rosalyn Carter, Ted Kennedy and others.

The Washington Post said about 500 of the 535 members of the next Congress skipped it as did six of the nine Supreme Court justices and all but one member of Bush's cabinet, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez.

Many were travelling during the holiday week.

Former U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who also served as Pentagon chief under Ford and was to have been another honorary pallbearer, missed it because he was snowed in New Mexico. A Rumsfeld spokesman said he would probably be able to get to the funeral on Tuesday at the National Cathedral.

People walk past the casket containing the body of former U.S. President Gerald Ford, placed in the U.S. Capitol rotunda where it will lie in state, in Washington til Tuesday.

Members of the public file past the casket of former U.S. President Gerald Ford in the rotunda at the U.S. Capitol as it lies in state in Washington.

The casket containing the body of former U.S. President Gerald Ford is placed in the U.S. Capitol rotunda where it will lie in state in Washington

Former first lady Betty Ford and her sons Steven (L-Rear) and Michael (L-front) pause at her late husband's casket as they leave with Vice President Dick Cheney (R-Rear) after ceremonies in which former U.S. President Gerald Ford's remains were brought to lie in state in the U.S. Capitol rotunda in Washington.


Former President Gerald Ford's casket is carried up the steps into the U.S. Capitol l in Washington, December 30, 2006. Ford, who died on Tuesday at the age of 93, will lie in State in the Capitol Rotunda.

Former first lady Bety Ford (L) holds hands with U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney during the State Funeral service for former U.S. President Gerald Ford in the rotunda at the U.S. Capitol in Washington.


American flags fly at half-staff at the foot of the Washington Monument.


Betty Ford, center, prays with House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Vice President Dick Cheney, right, at the Capitol.