Noteworthy by its absence in the media eulogies and glorification of former "president" Gerald Ford -- which unavoidably had to deal with his unelected status as an appointed vice-president who got the top spot when Nixon resigned, and retroactively painting his pardon of Nixon as an act of statesmanship which 'regrettably' cost him election to a full term -- is Ford's participation in an even bigger cover-up than his short-circuiting of the investigation into Nixon's crimes. I refer to Ford's crucial role in the Warren Commission into the assassination of JFK. I am not one of those who believes Kennedy was going to withdraw from Vietnam (or was anything other than a hawkish cold war 'liberal'), but I think it's clear the Warren Commission report was a whitewash. Here are two pertinent items regarding the role Ford played:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/JFK/ford.html (website has photos of JFK's shirt and jacket showing the bullethole at his back). By MIKE FEINSILBER The Associated Press WASHINGTON (July 2 [1997]) - 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.'' But still, his editing was seized upon by members of the conspiracy community, which rejects the commission's conclusion that Oswald acted alone. ''This is the most significant lie in the whole Warren Commission report,'' said Robert D. Morningstar, a computer systems specialist in New York City who said he has studied the assassination since it occurred and written an Internet book about it. The effect of Ford's editing, Morningstar said, was to suggest that a bullet struck Kennedy in the neck, ''raising the wound two or three inches. Without that alteration, they could never have hoodwinked the public as to the true number of assassins.'' If the bullet had hit Kennedy in the back, it could not have struck Connally in the way the commission said it did, he said. The Warren Commission concluded in 1964 that a single bullet - fired by a ''discontented'' Oswald - passed through Kennedy's body and wounded his fellow motorcade passenger, Connally, and that a second, fatal bullet, fired from the same place, tore through Kennedy's head. The assassination of the president occurred Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas; Oswald was arrested that day but was shot and killed two days later as he was being transferred from the city jail to the county jail. Conspiracy theorists reject the idea that a single bullet could have hit both Kennedy and Connally and done such damage. Thus they argue that a second gunman must have been involved. 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. {snip} AP-NY-07-02-97 1826EDT Here's further evidence of Ford's role in promoting the "magic bullet" theory, without which it is impossible that a single rifleman killed Kennedy and shot Connally in the process: http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/diary/ford.htm I had entered the assassination labyrinth by choosing the topic of the Warren Commission for my master's thesis in Government at Cornell. Andrew Hacker, my supervising professor, wanted me to ascertain how the government goes about searching for such an elusive quarry as the truth. The Warren Commission had been appointed by President Lyndon Johnson to perform such a task just 3 weeks after John F. Kennedy was shot to death on November 22, 1963. Ten months later, after operating in complete secrecy, it issued its report, establishing that one man, Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, was responsible for the assassination. How had the seven members of the Commission--Chief Justice Earl Warren, Former Central Intelligence Director Allen W. Dulles, John J. McCloy, the Chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank, Senator Richard B. Russell, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Senator John Sherman Cooper, the former Ambassador to India, Hale Boggs, the House Whip and Gerald R. Ford, the Republican leader in the House of Representatives -- organized their investigation, narrowed down their list of possible suspects to a single assassin, separated true from false allegations in their report, and, most importantly, during their secret meetings, insulated themselves from political pressures. Up until this point, the Warren Commissioners had steadfastly refused to discuss their deliberations with outsiders, and the Chief Justice had invoked an aura of secrecy by pointing out that remaining elements of the case may not be known "in our lifetime." But, risking only postage, I wrote each of them a brief letter in which I said I was a I was a student at Cornell University preparing to write a master's thesis on the problem of organizing a secret investigation and my case study was to be the Warren Commission. To my shock, all seven of these men, wrote me back a personal latter. Except for the Chief Justice (who suggested I interview the Commission's general counsel, J. Lee Rankin in his place), they all agreed to be interviewed for my thesis. I met Ford in Room 230, the office of the House Minority Leader. He was taller than I expected, with somewhat unruly patches of flaming red hair. He had an article Andrew Hacker had written in the New York Times conspicuously on his desk, as if to show me he had done his homework on my professor. He then turned on his office tape recorder for, he said, his record. The interview, according to my notes went as follows: Q. What role did the Commission play in selecting, its staff? A. We agreed on J. Lee Rankin--as it turns out a good choice--then Rankin submitted staff and biographies, and we approved. We, more or less, took his word. I didn't know any one of them. We approved purely on Rankin's say so. Q. Did the Commission act as a sort of Board Of Directors? A. I didn't. I had my own independent investigation. I had [Gerald] Stiles, and Ex-Congressman Ray, and a Harvard lawyer, Frank Fallon, on my payroll, and they evaluated testimony. I kept these people from the Commission because I wanted to be sure they were independently there. Q. Was there disagreement on the bullet that hit Governor Connally? A. There was a wide spectrum of opinion among the Commisssion. I was closest to the staff position that Connally was hit by same bullet that hit Kennedy. Senator Russell was at the opposite extreme. He believed that Connally was hit by a separate bullet. The other members ranged in between us. Q. Were there other areas of disagreement. A. Yes. I can note two. I) On point 9 (WR, p2l) At first, it categorically stated there was "no conspiracy." But after objections was changed to "no evidence was found" and the passage of proving negatives. On the point about Oswald's motivation, I added 'Marxism.' Q. How was it determined when to wind up? A. The deadline was pushed back, there was some pressure but we all felt we finished. The latest date was September 28, because we wanted to finish the report before the election. Otherwise, it might be an issue. Q. Who actually wrote the report? A. Norman Redlich had a substantial role, but we all -- McCloy, Dulles, Cooper, Warren, and myself -- made contributions. Boggs played a lesser role. He ended the interview, by saying, "By all means, write your thesis. I'm writing a book. This is no secrecy at all." It took about one hour. I had learned there were some conflicts between the staff and the Commissioners, and the Commissioners themselves. --------------------- From MN: So Ford acknowledges being the strongest advocate among the members of the commission for the single bullet theory (without which it would be impossible that Oswald fired all the shots). He admits attributing a "Marxist" motivation to Oswald, a red herring. And he acknowledges the Commission was under pressure to release its report prior to the 1964 election, to keep the assassination from becoming an issue in that election. Yet even the left, which has at least paid a bit of attention to Ford's role in launching Cheney and Rumsfeld and to his cutting a deal with Gen. Haig ahead of taking over to get Nixon to quit by pardoning him in advance of any indictment, hasn't said "boo" about Ford's pivotal role in crafting the Warren Commission mythology. His final, unpardonable, willingness to remain silent about his opposition to the Bush-Cheney pretexts for war in Iraq, while it might have done some good, until after his own death, rounds out Ford's role as a pre-eminent defender of imperialism and illegitimate presidential power from the light of truth. Even the media justification for his pardon of Nixon (that it "preserved the presidency") makes clear the reactionary nature of his political career. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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