[Sample B: Approval/Signature Sheet] - George Mason University

Kennedy – who was (allegedly) responsible for attempts to kill Castro?” 228 Belin even
claim it was possible that during his visit to the Cuban and Soviet embassies in Mexico
City in the weeks before the assassination that a Castro agent or sympathizer promised
financial support or other assistance t if Oswald succeeded in killing Kennedy.
Investigative author Gus Russo advanced a similar thesis in Live by the Sword:
The Secret War Against Castro and the Death of JFK, although he included much more
documentation and details about the Kennedy administration’s covert operations against
Castro. Russo’s research benefited from the release of government documents in the
aftermath of the 1991 movie JFK, but he excoriated the film’s portrayal of the Garrison
investigation and what he called a clique “conspiriati” united in their “pathological hatred
of the U.S. government.” He claimed these writers had churned out a “barrage of
ideologically-driven books” on the assassination. 229
Russo, however, documents many unsavory U.S. deeds: the CIA plots to
assassinate foreign leaders, especially Castro, including efforts to use organized crime to
accomplish the deed. Russo restated with emphasis the familiar thesis that Oswald killed
Kennedy alone in response to U.S. policies toward Cuba and his hero, Fidel Castro.
Russo claimed Bobby Kennedy, as well as President Johnson and other top officials,
moved to cover-up the covert activities against Castro, causing decades of suspicion
about the assassination. Russo, like Belin and FBI agent James Hosty, saw a possibility
228
Final Disclosure, 213.
229
Gus Russo, Live by the Sword: the Secret War Against Castro and the Death of JFK,
(Baltimore: Bancroft Press, 1998), viii.
108