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

more favorable reception in the press than in the United States. Joesten catalogued some
of the epithets he was called in the American press, including “a ‘fantast,’ a ‘revisionist,’
a ‘left extremist,’ a ‘symptom of a sick age,’ a ‘demonologist,’ whose book is
‘rubbish.’” 552 In a review titled For Some the Rational Isn’t Enough, New York Times
journalist Harrison E. Salisbury denounced Buchanan’s book. He wrote that “Each
uncertain link in Mr. Buchanan’s tenuous chain of evidence has been specifically tested
and rejected by the painstaking Warren inquiry.” 553 Both Joesten and Buchanan, who
was living in Paris, were leftists and advanced similar theories in their books, including
the right-wing nature of the alleged conspiracy, the participation of Texas oilmen
opposed to Kennedy’s plan to cut their huge “oil depletion allowance” tax break, a
version of the “peace thesis,” and Oswald as secret agent.
Buchanan drew parallels between the Southern antagonism he saw in both the
Lincoln assassination conspiracy and the alleged conspiracy to kill Kennedy. He noted
that initially “the impulse of observers everywhere was to assume a link between the
Kennedy assassination and the recent violence of Southerners against the Negro.” 554
With a supposed radical leftist accused of the crime and talk of an international
conspiracy, the case gained international significance with the threat of conflict between
the United States and communist bloc. When Ruby gunned down Oswald, the political
motivation of the assassination receded, according to Buchanan, because it was hard to
552
Joesten, 189.
553
Harrison E. Salisbury, “For Some the Rational Is Not Enough,” New York Times,
(November 22, 1964).
554
Thomas G. Buchanan, Who Killed Kennedy?, (New York: Macfadden-Bartell, 1965
(1964)), 11.
244