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

The 1988 documentary series The Men Who Killed Kennedy from British
producer Nigel Turner aired repeatedly on the A&E cable network and History Channel
in the United States beginning in 1991. 733 The initial five-part program did not try for
journalistic balance but showed a hodge-podge of conspiracy theories that did not always
fit together. Based on the statements of two French drug traffickers, the program accused
three Corsican mobsters with ties to the Marseille heroin network of carrying out a
contract from the American mafia to assassinate Kennedy. After the program aired in
Britain, the French government responded to the accusations by providing evidence that
it would have been impossible for the three to be in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963.
The mobster who allegedly fired the fatal head shot, Lucien Sarte, was in a Bordeaux
prison on that date. One of the alleged assassins, Sauveur Pironti, was serving on a
minesweeper based at Toulon, and the third, Roger Bocognani, was in prison in
Marseille. 734
While the program’s claim about the French connection to the assassination fell
flat, the documentary also presented interviews with a variety of witnesses to the events
surrounding the assassination and such assassination researchers as Fletcher Prouty, Jim
Garrison, and forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht. Many of the witnesses told of seeing
suspicious persons around the Grassy Knoll, or of hearing shots from the area. The
program even showed a colorized and enhanced photograph of a figure behind the picket
733
Nigel Turner, prod. The Men Who Killed Kennedy, 300 min. (A&E Home Video, 2002
(1988)).
734
Bugliosi, 904.
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