Documents / Official release
This file from the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library holds press releases and statements that House Republican Leader Gerald R. Ford issued between January and April 1966. Most cover Vietnam policy, the war on poverty, inflation, foreign aid, the federal budget and changes in his press staff. An April 21, 1966 statement says the Air Force told Ford it would contract a university with no close Air Force ties to have scientists study unexplained UFO sightings and make the report public. According to Ford, his call for congressional hearings led to this study.
CONGRESSMAN GERALD R. FORD HOUSE REPUBLICAN LEADER NEWS RELEASE For release Friday, March 18, 1966,P.J11. WASHINGTON--Medical help for South Vietnamese civilians is woefully inadequate and the Administration must act quickly to meet that need, House Republican Leader Gerald R. Ford declared today. Ford said he has received reports of miserable conditions in Vietnam hospitals and in some cases "absolute filthiness" from a Grand Rapids, Michigan, orthopedic surgeon who has donated his services in Vietnam on three oceasions and has just returned from a voluntary tour of duty there. The surgeon, Dr. Alfred B. Swanson, told Ford he is "appalled by the lack of medical facilities in Vietnam." "It's a national disgrace," Dr. Swanson declared. Ford noted that Health-Education-Welfare Secretary John W. Gardner, now on a Vietnam tour, has found hospital conditions fully as shocking as Dr. Swanson has described them. He pointed to a news dispatch from Banmethuot, South Vietnam, telling how Gardner visited a 30-bed Banmethuot hos- pital ward with 70 men and women patients piled into it and muttered to the hospital supervisor: "Impossible, impossible." Gardner flew to the hospital, 170 miles north of Saigon, to see what medical and educational aid South Vietnam lacks. (MORE)
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Official release, from the nara collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 55 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.