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

According to Garrison, Oswald was “mild-mannered” – not a violent sociopath as
portrayed by the Warren Commission – and “innocent” in the assassination. 574 Bannister
manipulated Oswald as an agent provocateur to make him appear as a Marxist activist in
New Orleans, but U.S. intelligence was the real power behind the plot to kill Kennedy.
Garrison wrote, “Oswald appears to have been extensively manipulated by the C.I.A. for
a long period prior to the assassination and may well have believed that he was working
for the government. Oswald was also an F.B.I. confidential informant.” 575 The scope of
Garrison’s theory of who was behind the assassination is breathtaking:
I believe that what happened at Dealey Plaza in Dallas on November 22, 1963,
was a coup d’etat. I believe that it was instigated and planned long in advance by
fanatical anticommunists in the United States intelligence community, that it was
carried out, most likely without official approval, by individuals in the C.I.A.’s
covert operations apparatus and other extra-governmental collaborators, and
covered up by like-minded individuals in the F.B.I., the Secret Service, the Dallas
police department, and the military; and that its purpose was to stop Kennedy
from seeking détente with the Soviet Union and Cuba and ending the Cold
War. 576
In Garrison’s view, Oswald recedes in importance, and becomes merely the pawn of vast
governmental forces that set him up as the “communist scapegoat” in the assassination to
end Kennedy’s efforts to forge peace and subdue Cold War tensions. 577 Oswald,
according to Garrison, did not even play a role in the assassination, and was calmly
buying a Coca-Cola while the presidential motorcade passed by. Garrison dismissed
what he called “false sponsors” who have been accused of carrying out the assassination
574
Jim Garrison, On the Trail of the Assassins, (New York: Warner Books, 1988), 117,
234.
575
Garrison, 327.
576
Garrison, 324.
577
Garrison, 70.
252