December 28, 2006—History has not been overly kind to the legacy of Gerald Ford, the 38th U.S. President, who died on December 26 at the age of 93.

As the National Geographic Channel's Tom Foreman puts it in this exclusive 2003 interview: "Some historians have said that your presidency in their minds did stabilize the country after Watergate, but that that was the only value of it."

"I strongly disagree," Ford counters, pointing out that his administration "solved the tragedy of war in Vietnam," "did turn the economy around," and had a "major diplomatic achievement" during the Helsinki Accords.