WASHINGTON — In courtrooms around the country and under the glare of a congressional hearing room, Ford Motor Co. may have to soon answer the famous query first posed during the Watergate hearings a generation ago: What did it know, and when did it know it?

        Ford tried to answer the question last week, describing its abrupt recall of 13 million Firestone Wilderness AT tires as a “precautionary measure.” But Ford officials now say preliminary figures indicate that nine deaths and 22 injuries can be tied to the tires.

        What Ford knew and when will be key questions in the hundreds of product liability cases pending from last year's tire recall.

        Despite the praise and positive publicity the world's second-largest automaker has received for acting sooner than it had to, Ford will still have to answer in court about whether it might have acted sooner to save lives.

        “They finally decided, in their own self-interest, to tell the truth,” said Ralph Hoar, director of the consumer group Safetyforum.com. “They haven't said anything we haven't said and documented for months.”

        His group has worked with attorneys suing Ford and Firestone over the tire recall. Using the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's database of Firestone complaints, Safetyforum said at least 14 deaths and 137 injuries have occurred on Wilderness AT tires not subject to last year's Firestone recall.

        The group does not break down the figures by automaker.

        Ford has emphasized that it acted quickly after receiving data from Firestone on May 11.

        The company said the new data included complete details of Firestone's warranty claims from all of last year for the first time.

        Company officials said their immediate analysis of the data was part of an early-warning system developed in response to legislation passed by Congress last year.

        But with the bright spotlight of more congressional hearings in June, Ford can expect questions about when it concluded millions of customers were at risk. NHTSA will be asked for its take on the Ford decision.

        Meanwhile, the unprecedented corporate feud between Ford and Firestone will make it harder for both companies to move beyond the recall and get back to business, product liability experts say.

        The legal community is looking at the Ford-Firestone feud with astonishment. It is unusual for two companies on the same side of a slew of lawsuits not to cooperate with each other in their defense.

        “This is really a civil war,” said Victor Schwartz, an expert on product liability who defended Firestone in lawsuits. “I'm watching with dismay.”

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