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

identifications, the conduct of police line-ups in which Oswald is identified, why in fact
Tippit allegedly accosted Oswald, and why a large number of police converged on a
theater because someone entered without a ticket. At the police station, the officers
realize the suspect from the theater is a man missing from School Book Depository and
may be a suspect in the president’s assassination.
The Commission makes another shift in its narrative, beginning its biographical
sketch of a supposed loner and communist-sympathizer known as Lee Harvey Oswald.
The narrative moves through Oswald’s life right up to the assassination, and the reader
arrives again at Oswald in police custody and then his own murder. Oswald’s actions
after the assassination and his biography are woven into the narrative that compels the
reader to accept the finding of Oswald’s guilt, and to hide the weaknesses connecting the
narrative together. The summary concludes with a series of seemingly authoritative
statements about Oswald’s guilt, and his and Ruby’s lack of conspiratorial associations.
The reader is assured that “These conclusions represent the reasoned judgment of all
members of the Commission and are presented after an investigation which has satisfied
the Commission that it has ascertained the truth.” 90 The summary places Oswald center
stage, and the Commission never moved its gaze away from him to explore other possible
assassins or conspirators not related to Oswald who may have framed him for the murder
of President Kennedy, including elements of the U.S. government itself.
Throughout the report in making its case against Oswald, the Commission often
used declarative statements that masked ambiguous evidence concerning whether Oswald
90 WC Report, 18.
54