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

attorney. He later became a state court appellate judge. Some Warren Commission
critics have stood by Garrison in all his controversies, while others said he set back the
effort to solve the case. He was anathema to the defenders of the Commission’s findings.
His story became the basis for Stone’s JFK, reigniting the controversy over Garrison’s
prosecution of Shaw and more importantly the Kennedy assassination.
Mark Lane – the New York attorney who authored the best-selling critique of the
Warren Commission Rush to Judgment – later penned another bestseller that blamed the
CIA for the Kennedy assassination. In his book Plausible Denial, Lane offered his
theory about the assassination and the role of convicted Watergate burglar and former
CIA officer E. Howard Hunt. Lane focused on his work defending a group called Liberty
Lobby that published an article on August 14, 1978 in its journal Spotlight that accused
Hunt of involvement in the assassination. Hunt sued for defamation. Lane did not focus
on Oswald. However, Lane prefaced his book by alleging that “Oswald was on a mission
in the Soviet Union on behalf of the CIA” and that no file was opened on him at the CIA
initially “because he was playing the role the agency had assigned him.” 583
Hunt had initially won a $650,000 judgment in his defamation lawsuit, but the
verdict was overturned on appeal because of legal technicalities. Lane took on the case in
an effort to put the CIA on trial for the murder of President Kennedy. He did not argue
libel law, but focused on the facts of the case to try to prove Hunt was involved in the
583
Mark Lane, Plausible Denial: was the CIA Involved in the Assassination of JFK?,
(New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1991), xxi.
255