Leo Sauvage

    Leo Sauvage was serving as chief U.S. correspondent for the French daily Le Figaro when Kennedy was assassinated. One of France's most distinguished writers, he took an early interest in the assassination and soon published the book L'Affaire Oswald in Paris. In March 1964 he published a summary of the book under its English title "The Oswald Affair" in Commentary, making it one of the earliest articles published after the assassination. After Thomas Buchanan published his early book Who Killed Kennedy?, Sauvage aligned himself strongly against it and the six-part series in the French weekly L'Express from which the book was synthesized. He did battle with Buchanan in a three-part series in The New Leader (Sauvage, Buchanan, Sauvage) in its issues of 28 September and 9 November 1964.(For specific links to Sauvage's two contributions to this series, see below.) For more on this minifeud, and Buchanan's article in response to Sauvage's first, see Pre-WCR Reactions of the Left.
    Shortly after the Warren Commission released its Report, Sauvage published in The New Leader another three critical articles on it, entitled "The Warren Commission's Case Against Oswald," "Oswald's Case Against the Warren Commission," and "The Case Against Mr. X." We also provide links to these three articles below. Sauvage was a cogent thinker and a very good writer, even in English. His articles presage many of the arguments that the JFK critical community would make for many more years. His articles make good reading because they express their criticisms more clearly and cogently than most later writers would.

"The Oswald Affair" (Commentary, March 1964)
"Thomas Buchanan, Detective" (The New Leader, 28 September 1964)
"As I Was Saying" (The New Leader, 9 November 1964)
"The Warren Commission's Case Against Oswald" (The New Leader, 22 November 1965)
"Oswald's Case Against the Warren Commission" (The New Leader, 20 December 1965)
"The Case Against Mr. X" (The New Leader, 3 January 1966)