Gerald Ford forced to admit the Warren Report fictionalized
Thirty-three years ago, Gerald R. Ford took pen in
hand and changed - ever so slightly - the Warren Commission's key sentence
on the place where a bullet entered John F. Kennedy's body when he was
killed in Dallas.
The effect of Ford's change was to strengthen the commission's conclusion
that a single bullet passed through Kennedy and severely wounded Texas
Gov. John Connally - a crucial element in its finding that Lee Harvey
Oswald was the sole gunman.
A small change, said Ford on Wednesday when it came to light, one intended
to clarify meaning, not alter history.
''My changes had nothing to do with a conspiracy theory,'' he said in a
telephone interview from Beaver Creek, Colo. ''My changes were only an
attempt to be more precise.''
Ford's changes tend to support the single-bullet theory by making a
specific point that the bullet entered Kennedy's body ''at the back of his
neck'' rather than in his uppermost back, as the commission staff
originally wrote.
Ford's handwritten notes were contained in 40,000 pages of records kept by
J. Lee Rankin, chief counsel of the Warren Commission.
They were made public Wednesday by the Assassination Record Review Board,
an agency created by Congress to amass all relevant evidence in the case.
The documents will be available to the public in the National Archives.
The staff of the commission had written: ''A bullet had entered his back
at a point slightly above the shoulder and to the right of the spine.''
Ford suggested changing that to read: ''A bullet had entered the back of
his neck at a point slightly to the right of the spine.''
The final report said: ''A bullet had entered the base of the back of his
neck slightly to the right of the spine.''
Ford, then House Republican leader and later elevated to the presidency
with the 1974 resignation of Richard Nixon, is the sole surviving member
of the seven-member commission chaired by Chief Justice Earl Warren.
Link:
http://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/JFK/ford.html
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