As a U.S. representative, Ford was a member of the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The experience affected him profoundly. During a site visit to the Texas School Book Depository, the members of the committee took a rifle similar to the one used by Lee Harvey Oswald and looked through its scope at the traffic circulating below. “Kennedy had been my friend,” Ford later recalled. “The thought we were reconstructing his assassination sent a chill down my spine.”