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

Ford and Stiles used information from executive session transcripts which would
not be made available publicly until years later, and they were able to give their “spin” on
these sessions before other writers and researchers could use this material to draw their
own conclusions. For example, Ford and Stiles described one of the first crises facing the
Commission when Texas officials claimed that Oswald was an undercover informant of
the FBI. The authors quoted former CIA director Allen Dulles as saying it was a
“terribly hard thing to disprove” whether someone was an undercover agent or informant,
but the Commission worried that this would call into question the integrity of the nation’s
institutions. Considerable efforts were made to satisfy the public that this and other
“myriad rumors” were not true. 101
Ford and Stiles steadfastly rejected the idea that Oswald was an agent of the U.S.
government, but raised the issue so often it almost begged the question of whether it was
true. They noted questions of whether Oswald was a false defector to the Soviet Union
or was attempting to infiltrate left-wing groups in the United States upon his return, but
rejected the possibility. Oswald told his brother Robert that an FBI agent who
interviewed him after his return had in fact asked him whether he was a U.S. government
agent. Oswald had replied “Well, don’t you know?” 102 Apparently the answer is that the
FBI did not know. Ford and Stiles also noted Oswald’s frequent change of address,
describing this as “classic conduct for someone who really was involved in plots, or
101 Ford and Stiles, 22.
102 Ford and Stiles, 169.
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