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

to re-investigate the Kennedy assassination, as well as that of civil rights leader Martin
Luther King, Jr.
During $5.5-million investigation from 1976 to 1978, the House of
Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations reexamined the forensic,
photographic, and other evidence in the Kennedy case. The chief counsel of the
committee, G. Robert Blakey, – a former Justice Department lawyer and expert on
organized crime –acknowledged that the early part of the 12-member panel’s
investigation was “rough sailing.” 411 The Congressional Black Caucus had spearheaded
the effort to form a committee, and in September 1977 the resolution setting it up was
approved. Blakey later recounted the turmoil surrounding the committee’s first
chairman, Democrat Henry Gonzalez of Texas, and its first chief counsel, Philadelphia
prosecutor Richard Sprague. Blakey described his predecessor as “a man of action, not
reflective or cautious” who admitted to a reporter that he had not read the Warren
Commission’s report or any of the critical books “because he wanted to keep an open
mind.” He assembled a staff of 170 lawyers, investigators, and researchers, and his
budget proposal for the committee ballooned to $6.5 million. Controversy erupted,
according to Blakey, over “Sprague, his methods, and his proposed budget.” 412 Sprague
clashed with chairman Gonzalez, who sought to dismiss the chief counsel. Eventually,
411
G. Robert Blakey, “Introduction,” Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations
U.S. House of Representatives, (New York: Bantam Books, 1979), xxxi.
412
.G. Robert Blakey and Richard N. Billings, The Plot to Kill the President, (New York:
Times Books, 1981), 64-65.
183