Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations U.S. House of Representatives Ninety-Fifth Congress Second Session; Findings and Recommendations

xiii, [1], 686, [4] pages. Wraps. Appendices. References. Ink name on front cover. Some wear to spine. Union Calendar No. 962. House Report No. 95-1828, Part 2. The Select Committee concluded that President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King were both assassinated as the result of conspiracies. Several forces contributed to the formation of the HSCA. With the growing body of assassination conspiracy material, public trust in the findings of the Warren Commission report was declining. The Hart-Schweiker and Church Committee hearings had recently revealed CIA ties to other assassinations and assassination attempts. In September 1976, the United States House of Representatives voted 280-65 to establish the Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) in order to investigate the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. The Justice, FBI, CIA, and the Warren Commission were all criticized for not revealing to the Warren Commission information available in 1964, and the Secret Service was deemed deficient in their protection of the President. The HSCA made several accusations of deficiency against the FBI & CIA. The accusations encompassed organizational failures, miscommunication, and a desire to keep certain parts of their operations secret. The Warren Commission expected these agencies to be forthcoming with information that would aid their investigation. But the FBI & CIA only saw it as their duty to respond to specific requests for information from the commission. The HSCA found the FBI & CIA were deficient in performing even that limited role. The United States House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) was established in 1976 to investigate the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1963 and 1968, respectively. The HSCA completed its investigation in 1978 and issued its final report the following year, which concluded that Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. In addition to acoustic analysis of a police channel dictabelt recording, the HSCA also commissioned numerous other scientific studies of assassination-related evidence that corroborate the Warren Commission's controversial findings. The HSCA found that although the Commission and the different agencies and departments examining Kennedy's assassination performed in good faith and were thorough in their investigation of Lee Harvey Oswald, they performed with "varying degrees of competency" and the search for possible conspiracy was inadequate. The HSCA determined, based on available evidence, that the probable conspiracy did not involve the governments of Cuba or the Soviet Union. The committee also stated that the conspiracy did not involve any organized crime group, anti-Castro group, nor the FBI, CIA, or Secret Service. The committee found that it could not exclude the possibility that individual members of the national syndicate of organized crime or anti-Castro Cubans were involved in a probable conspiracy to assassinate president Kennedy. However, some members of the committee would later state their personal belief that one of those groups was involved in the assassination, with Representative Floyd Fithian believing that the Kennedy assassination was orchestrated by members of organized crime. In a Justice Department memo to the House Judiciary Committee in 1988, the Assistant Attorney General formally reviewed the recommendations of the HSCA report and reported a conclusion of active investigations. In light of investigative reports from the FBI's Technical Services Division and the National Academy of Science Committee determining that "reliable acoustic data do not support a conclusion that there was a second gunman", the Justice Department concluded "that no persuasive evidence can be identified to support the theory of a conspiracy in . the assassination of President Kennedy".…