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Vladivostok totals. Subsequent intelligence estimates have
sustained his view that it was a medium bomber.

[As the former senior Republican on the Armed Services Committee President Ford suffered greatly from the critics in his own party who accused him of neglecting the nation's President Ford's defenses. His record speaks for itself: Every strategic weapons program of the Eighties excepting only strategic defense was started in his administration and has been reduced by all of his successors including the conservative Administrations.]

트루어 All
 systems?

President Ford kept the peace process in the Middle
East in high gear. He understood that President Sadat was
the key [to it] on the Arab side, and in two meetings with
him as well as in many meetings with Israeli leaders, he
laid the basis for the interim agreement in the Sinai, without
which the Egyptian-Israeli peace could never have ensued.
In the process there were some painful interludes with our
Israeli friends and defacto allies which most of them now
realize were essential for the peace process to be concluded.

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One of President Ford's most courageous moments came over the issue of majority rule in Rhodesia. He and I had agreed that the United States needed to identify itself with the demands for majority rule provided that the rights of minorities, racial or ethnic, were safeguarded by proper procedures. A complex diplomacy was initiated which by its own momentum was scheduled to culminate just before the Texas primary of May 1976. Before I left, I warned him that all his political experts were warning against [introducing] the issue at that point. President Ford said simply that he saw no reason to change a game plan developed before the Texas primary had become crucial simply to [save] his own political ambitions. It is statements like this which make campaign managers shudder; they make students of history proud of their country--and to leaders like President Ford,

Once again events have vindicated him. All subsequent administrations have had to travel the road President Ford had [had] charted, often having sacrificed the freedom of action that comes from anticipating crises.

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I do not cover President Ford's [democratic] role only because I feel less competent to do so. But we should remember that inflation has *never been lower* than at that period and that the veto was used courageously to restrain governmental spending, as the deficit figures make clear.

A foreword cannot do justice to a considerable Presidency. It can point out that much was *achieved* and *that* even more was on the verge of achievement when President *--for the country--* Ford's term ended *too soon*, after only thirty months in office.

an
President Ford was a good man and/effective President.

I do not pretend to be objective with respect to him. I will always consider it one of the great gifts of my life to have been permitted to serve Gerald R. Ford as President and to call him a friend.