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

Chicago to arrange Giancana’s testimony about the CIA-Mafia plots. That evening, he
was shot in the back of the head while cooking dinner. No one was ever charged in either
case.
A surprising advocate of the theory that the CIA-Mafia plots backfired and led to
John Kennedy’s assassination was Lyndon Johnson. In comments published in the July
1973 edition of the Atlantic Monthly shortly after Johnson’s death, the former President
declared “I never believed that Oswald acted alone, although I can accept that he pulled
the trigger.” This from the man who set up the Warren Commission and publicly
endorsed its findings. Johnson also stated that the United States “had been operating a
damned Murder Inc. in the Caribbean” – an apparent reference to the CIA plots using the
mob to kill Castro. Johnson speculated that the Kennedy assassination had been
retaliation for a CIA-backed assassination team captured in Havana. 402 Johnson’s claim
that he believed Oswald did not act alone was an explosive statement, but the former
President may also have had hidden motives in implying that Castro was to blame. In
doing so, Johnson preserved the left-wing basis of the assassination and perhaps shielded
himself, the CIA, the mob, or right-wing from allegations of direct involvement.
In his 1973 book Legacy of Doubt, journalist Peter Noyes investigated the links
between organized crime, right-wing extremists, Lee Harvey Oswald, and the familiar
cast of characters in New Orleans – mafia chieftain Carlos Marcello, his associate David
402
Leo Janos, “The Last Days of the President: LBJ in Retirement,” the Atlantic, (July
1973), 39.
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