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

to lose if his culpability was uncovered. The United States would clearly retaliate and
annihilate the Castro government.
Other authors have added to the literature of Oswald as mob patsy in the years
after the House investigation. David E. Scheim was the unlikeliest of the mob conspiracy
theorists: he received a doctorate in mathematics from MIT and was director of
management information systems at the National Institutes of Health. His 1988 book
Contract on America: the Mafia Murder of President John F. Kennedy built on the work
of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Scheim alleged that “President John
Kennedy and very possibly his brother Robert were martyred in a valiant struggle against
organized crime.” He applauded their “heroism” in fighting the mob, and implored his
readers to “carry on their crusade against the ‘enemy within’ and return to other
enlightened Kennedy policies that were aborted by the assassination.” 451 Here is a
revision of the Camelot myth lauding the late President. In this account, the noble
Kennedy is not felled by a deranged individual, but is the victim of a conspiracy by a
nefarious and powerful foe – the Mafia. Scheim mentions but does not emphasize the
Kennedy family’s own associations with organized crime, beginning with patriarch
Joseph P. Kennedy’s widely reported bootlegging during the Prohibition era. These
connections were the President’s “Achilles Heel.” 452
451
David E. Scheim, Contract on America: the Mafia Murder of President John F.
Kennedy, (New York: Shapolsky Publishers, 1988), 4-5
452
Scheim, 62.
201