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

values were those of a self-proclaimed Marxist who would be bound to favor the Castro
regime in Cuba, or at least not advocate its overthrow.” 421 The Committee accepted at
face value some of the details of the official version of Oswald’s life: the Marxist Marine
with no connection to American intelligence even though he served at a top-secret U-2
airbase in Japan; the ideological defector to the Soviet Union, and the disaffected radical
with an unstable. The Committee concluded that “in the last 5 years of his life, Oswald
was preoccupied with political ideology,” and upon his return to the United States, “his
words and actions still revolved around ideological causes.” 422 The congressional
investigators tied themselves into knots into denying any intelligence role for Oswald and
trying to fit a left-wing assassin into a right-wing Mafia and anti-Castro conspiracy. The
panel avowed that “There was no indication in Oswald’s CIA file that he had ever had
contact with the Agency.” 423 The report left the door slightly ajar in noting that the
CIA’s enormous and complex filing system – “designed to prevent penetration by foreign
powers” – had “the simultaneous effect of making congressional inquiry difficult.” 424 It
is the nature of spies – and their filing systems – to be inscrutable.
Yet, the Committee relied on the CIA files to discount various conspiracy
theories, especially those involving U.S. government culpability. The congressional
report did not delve deeply into Oswald’s relationship, for example, with George de
Mohrenschildt, who committed suicide in March 1977 after being interviewed by
421 House Report, 167.
422 House Report, 60-61.
423 House Report, 247.
424 House Report, 248.
188