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

powered rifle. Triangulation of crossfire is the key….The crucial ting is one man has to
be sacrificed” – presumably the unwitting Oswald. 697 The fictional O’Keefe character is
a composite, and the statement about plotting the assassination is based on the story of
real-life witness Perry Russo. Stone and Sklar explained that they “chose to make
O’Keefe a convict to illustrate the ‘quality’ of Garrison’s witnesses, which received lots
of criticism.” 698 Stones uses O’Keefe as a vehicle to explore some of the testimony
about Shaw, Ferrie, and Oswald, but the fact that the character is fictional undercuts
Stone’s argument and seems like a questionable artistic choice in a film replete with
historical figures.
Stone has Garrison suggesting that Oswald was an agent of U.S. intelligence, but
the director does not focus his film on the alleged assassin. Instead, the Oswald character
– played by Gary Oldman – was a vehicle to explore the Garrison thesis of a wide-
ranging conspiracy and cover-up involving the U.S. government. Garrison and his
assistants discuss Oswald’s professed leftist beliefs coinciding with his service in the
Marine Corps and later defection to the Soviet Union. Garrison tells his assistants
“Dammit, it doesn’t add up! Ordinary people get blacklisted for leftist affiliations! The
State Department did everything short of dispatching a destroyer to Minsk to insure
Oswald’s return. Only intelligence people can come and go like that.” 699 Garrison
697 Sklar and Stone, 71.
698 Sklar and Stone, 66.
699 Sklar and Stone, 51.
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