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

Harvey Oswald and U.S. Intelligence, Melanson, a political science professor at
Southeastern Massachusetts University and chair of the Robert F. Kennedy Assassination
archives, detailed the evidence that indicate the alleged assassin was a CIA agent.
Melanson acknowledged his debt to the investigative work and ideas of another political
scientist, Peter Dale Scott, and British researcher Anthony Summers. Melanson noted
that Oswald left a “rich and mysterious trail of events and artifacts” during his brief life,
and that no historical clarity has been achieved to answer the question “’Who was Lee
Harvey Oswald?’” Melanson described Oswald as “the most fascinating and complex
assassin (alleged or actual) in U.S. history.” 624
The expert on American political assassinations concluded that there was a
conspiracy and Oswald was a U.S. intelligence agent but he did not seek to demonstrate
whether the former Marine actually took part in the assassination. According to
Melanson, “Lee Harvey Oswald spent nearly all his adult life working for U.S.
intelligence – most likely for the CIA – as an agent-provocateur. He did so in both the
domestic and international arenas, right up to his involvement in the assassination.”
Oswald “maintained a façade of leftism...[but] his associations and contacts were
decidedly right-wing and anti-communist.” 625
Melanson marshaled his evidence to show that the real Oswald was much more
complex than the lone nut portrait drawn by the Warren Commission and its defenders.
He described Oswald as “a poised, rather resourceful political manipulator who surely
624
Philip H. Melanson, Spy Saga: Lee Harvey Oswald and U.S. Intelligence, (New York:
Praeger, 1990), xiii-xiv.
625
Melanson, xiv-xv.
273