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

often lump all the Kennedy assassination literature with much more dubious claims about
extraterrestrials, secret societies, and outrageous government plots. However, all
conspiracy theories must be judged individually on their merits. The fact that many
people ascribe to such theories is also an effect of the collapse in public confidence in
government and other institutions in the wake of the Kennedy assassination and other
national traumas and scandals of the 1960’s and beyond.
Other authors have argued that both the mob and U.S. intelligence conspired
together with Oswald in the assassination. Investigative author Anthony Summers
published his influential book Conspiracy in 1980. It was later revised and reissued in
1998 under the title Not in Your Lifetime: the Definitive Book on the J.F.K. Assassination
following the release of many official documents in the aftermath of Oliver Stone's JFK.
Summers examined the shadowy connections of Oswald, Ruby, and other assassination
figures with the mob, US intelligence, and anti-Castro Cuban exiles. Summers argued “it
is possible that a renegade element in US intelligence manipulated Oswald at some stage
-- even if intelligence operatives had nothing whatsoever to do with the assassination
itself. In the worst case scenario, it is even possible that the same element activated
pawns in the anti-Castro movement and the Mafia to murder the President.” 607 Summers
admitted that the full truth is not known.
607
Anthony Summers, Not in Your Lifetime: the Definitive Book on the J.F.K.
Assassination, (New York: Marlowe & Company, 1998), xii.
265