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.
“Hill”1 page
.... - .,.- -· CONGRESSMAN GERALD R. FORD HOUSE REPUBLICAN LEADER NEWS RELEASE FOR WEDNESDAY P.M. RELEASE APRIL 6, 1966 STATEMENT BY HOUSE MINORITY LEADER GERALD R. FORD, R-MICHIGAN. I feel certain the House will pass highway safety and tire safety bills in some form this year. I personally feel there should be action in this area. But it might be useful at this point, when the Senate hearings on highway safety are in progress and House hearings are to start late this month, to try to put auto safety in proper perspective. There is danger in the sensationalism of the Senate hearings. It tends to distort the auto safety problem, throw it out of proportion. Dramatic testimony has been presented to the effect that 1965 Chevrolets and 1964 and 1965 Chevelles equipped with Powerglide Transmission present a potential hazard--the possibility that the accelerator will stick when kept at the same level for some time under certain winter driving condidDns. Testimony making GM out to be a villain is obscuring the fact that GM knows of only five incidents resulting from this potential hazard. Also drowned out in the tumult and the shouting is the fact that no injuries occurred in any of the five incidents. GM is calling all of these cars back--as, of course, it should--and is installing a splash guard at a total cost of $3 million to protect against any further incidents. I am not trying to minimize the seriousness of a development of this kind. But I do believe there is a temptation under the circumstances to try to pin most automobile accidents on the manufacturer, saying he simply isn't engineering enough safety into his product. Of course, we want safety built into our cars, but we must not lose sight of the fact that auto accidents are caused by a variety of factors--and it is highly unusual to find the kind of potential hazard in new automobiles w~h GM is QQJI' tak,~.ngsteps to eliminate in 1.5 million of its cars. There is also much to be learned from a four-year on-the-spot study of fatal auto accidents in the Ann Arbor, Michigan, area just completed by University of Michigan scientists Donald F. Huelke and Paul W. Gikas. (MORE)
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.