12. Gerald Ford’s Salacious Scandal
Other than the perception that he was a klutz, Gerald Ford was an unremarkable president, and his best-known presidential act was the pardon of Richard Nixon. However, if contemporary reporters had dug into his private life with the same eagerness today’s reporters devote to politicians’ private lives, Ford would probably be remembered for a juicy scandal, as well. To wit, he had an affair with an East German spy named Ellen Rometsch, directed by her country’s intelligence to befriend powerful American politicians and report back. The press did not find out about the affair at the time, but J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI’s creepy director did, and he blackmailed Ford with it.
Ellen Rometsch married a West German air force sergeant, and accompanied him to Washington when he was assigned there. In DC, she got a job as a hostess at a salon organized by Bobby Baker, an aide to President Lyndon Johnson, as a private club for male politicians. Rometsch arranged for hookers and went on dates with some of the members herself. A stunner who looked like Elizabeth Taylor, Rometsch got Baker to introduce her to then-president John F. Kennedy. It was not long before they got it on. As Baker put it: “She really loved oral s*x. … She went the White House several times. And president Kennedy called me and said it’s the best head-job he’d ever had, and he thanked me.”