Another legacy of Gerald Ford: The single bullet theory

[scoopmeister]

http://www.attytood.com/2006/12/gerald_fords_other_contributio_1.html

To be sure, as most Pennsylvanians, Attytood readers and Oliver Stone fans know, it was another prominent politician, Sen. Arlen Specter, a staff attorney for the Warren Commission, who developed the idea -- also known as "the magic bullet" -- that one bullet caused seven different wounds in the president and Texas Gov. John Connally and still ended up on a hospital stretcher in pristine condition. If Kennedy and Connally had been struck by separate bullets, there would not have been enough time for just one gunman to have fired all of the shots in Dealy Plaza that day.

But Specter was a lowly staffer, and his theory would still not have become political and media gospel in the 1960s without help from at least one of the five men that President Lyndon Johnson named to the Warren panel.

And Gerald Ford, then a GOP congressman from Michigan, was that man.

Here's what the Associated Press reported on July 2, 1997 (via Nexis):

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.

Read the rest.

[whistle]

1. This is why Gerald Ford said he would probably go straight to hell

[Bolo Boffin]

4. Not true.

Ford is said to have believed that because of his pardon of Richard Nixon.

[havocmom]

2. Yep, that was first in my mind upon hearing of Ford's death.

Swell guy, with a LOT to answer for if there is any judgment. He enabled a horrible crime of covering up the murder of a president. Then he waved a wand and set Nixon free.

Personable chap? Maybe. Good guy? Not bloody likely.

[Zynx]

3. Even though it has been proven on a few documentaries that the single

bullet theory is actually possible...

Can't let those pesky facts get in the way though.