Gerald Ford Home From Hospital

(CBS/AP)  Former President Gerald Ford has been released from the hospital after what his chief of staff says were routine medical tests.

The former president, who is 92, was admitted to Eisenhower Medical Center late Monday and released Tuesday evening.

"He's in for medical tests, routine tests," Ford's chief of staff, Penny Circle, told The Associated Press by telephone from Ford's Rancho Mirage office about 110 miles east of Los Angeles. "He's had a horrible cold and he still hasn't gotten over it."

Mr. Ford returned to his Rancho Mirage home Tuesday evening, according to a statement read by hospital spokeswoman Elizabeth Wholihan.

Circle said Mr. Ford undergoes medical tests each December. He had two days of hospital tests in January to follow-up on last year's annual physical.

"We wish President Ford well and a speedy recovery," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

In May 2003, the former president was hospitalized for a night at Eisenhower after he got dizzy while golfing in hot weather.

CBS News correspondent Peter Maer reports Mr. Ford has not been seen in public in recent years. His last known major medical problem was a stroke in 2000 while attending the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia. Following a hospitalization of about a week and treatment with anti-clotting drugs, doctors said there was no apparent brain damage or permanent disability.

After the death of former President Ronald Reagan in June 2004, Mr. Ford became the nation's oldest living former president.

He is also the only living member of the Warren Commission, the still controversial panel set up by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1963 to investigate and report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Mr. Ford, who was first elected to Congress in 1948, was House minority leader when Nixon chose him to replace the resigned Spiro Agnew as vice president in 1973. The Michigan Republican became president on Aug. 9, 1974, when Nixon resigned as a result of the Watergate scandal, which ended for Nixon – if not the nation – when the newly sworn-in president granted Nixon a pardon in an act he said was intended to move the country beyond Watergate.