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

finally came forward. In one of her more plausible statements, Baker decried the fact that
she had caused “embarrassment” to her family by telling her story about Oswald, cancer,
and the Kennedy assassination.
In the early 1990’s, Oswald was a hot commodity after the success of JFK, and
the mainstream media entered the fray. The PBS television series Frontline aired a
program on November 16, 1993 called “Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?” near the 30 th
anniversary of the assassination. 737 The program leaned heavily on the Warren
Commission and its defenders, but included some discussion by G. Robert Blakey and
others that the mob may have been responsible. Not in doubt throughout the program
was the idea that Oswald was the trigger man in the assassination – whether he had
confederates or not. Frontline also presented little discussion of whether Oswald was a
U.S. secret agent or that a right-wing plot involving the CIA carried out the assassination.
After all, Newt Gingrich and his allies in Congress at the time might have protested and
tried to pull the plug on PBS, depriving the kids of Elmo and Big Bird. The program
attempted to offer both sides of the assassination debate in line with journalistic
conventions, but slanted the evidence in favor of Oswald as lone gunman.
The program began with archival footage of Oswald telling the press on
November 22, 1963 that the police had “taken me in because of the fact that I lived in the
Soviet Union. I’m just a patsy.” The narrator said Frontline would try to answer the
737
William Cran and Ben Loeterman, dir., “Who was Lee Harvey Oswald?” Frontline
(PBS Video, 2005 (1993)).
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