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

coincidences added up to Thornley’s possible involvement in a conspiracy. He would
write of Thornley that “the strange intersections between his life and Lee Oswald’s
remained enigmatic. Was Thornley an agent of the intelligence community? Had he
impersonated Oswald or coached others to do so? Did he know more than he was
saying?” 321 The comedian Mort Sahl became a firm believer in Garrison’s assassination
conspiracy theories, and began to include references to Thornley’s alleged role in the
assassination in his stand-up routines.
Unfortunately for Thornley, his constant questioning of society, his extreme
individualism, and his experiences with Oswald and Garrison helped cause him to
become paranoid and mentally ill. In the 1970’s, he came to believe that there was a
conspiracy, and he had been used by the conspirators as part of the plot. According to his
biographer, Thornley “became like the very people he’d parodied,” people who “created
elaborate conspiracy theories which mirrored their own muddled minds.” 322 Thornley
died from a kidney ailment in 1998 – seven years after his novel based on Oswald was
finally published.
Thornley’s earlier non-fiction book Oswald – published in 1965 – is a short work
made up of several segments: a psychiatrist’s commentary on the alleged assassin and
Thornley’s description of him, Thornley’s own thoughts about Oswald, selections from
his novel The Idle Warriors, and his Warren Commission testimony. There is even a
poetical tribute to the slain President by Paul Neimark, which perhaps was included to
321
Jim Garrison, On the Trail of the Assassins, (New York: Warner Books, 1988), 89.
322
Gorightly, 200.
145