The Controversial HSCA Investigation and Beyond..

The Controversial HSCA Investigation and Beyond..

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Hey all,

Admittedly, this is a thread that I’ve been wanting and meaning to write up for a while now, but lately some real life issues have stopped me from being online all that much thus I’ve not had a real good chance to dedicate all that much time to doing any real research and then putting together something like this the way I'd really like to, whether it be this thread I’m posting now, any other thread or any other post around this site for that matter. But, this being so, relatively recently I finally managed to get online a bit more and dedicate some time to researching something I happen to find truly interesting, this being why I’ve posted this thread, I wanted to share what I came up with.

See, it's no secret that this topic, the JFK Assassination, has become a truly fascinating one for me personally and I enjoy taking the time out to learn about it whenever I can, this despite the fact that this particular topic is near to being 50 years old now. Reason for this is simple - I believe a conspiracy occurred and I believe it's unbelievably obvious too. For that reason, I feel as though it should be shared, analysed and discussed whenever possible, or at the very least more than it still is. And after all why not? If we find something we believe to be a conspiracy, should we share it and explain our reasoning? Of course we should. Always.

With writing this thread however I'm looking to share something which researchers of this case have been debating for decades now - The HSCA (House Select Committee of Assassinations) investigations final conclusions pointing towards a conspiracy taking place in the JFK assassination, an investigation far too many people, in my opinion, do not seem to know about, or at the very least seem to know too little about, some only being able to recognize it by name. At the very same time, it's one of the most well known investigations on the whole case, one being discussed and debated over for many years now.

It's also worth pointing out at this time though that this investigation, the HSCA investigation, didn't choose to solely focus on one thing of the time, it chose to primarily focus on the JFK Assassination and also the Martin Luther King assassination as well as other thing’s (Such as the RFK assassination for example, the attempted assassination of Governor George Wallace via shooting, a shooting which left him paralyzed until the day of his death on the 13th of September, 1998 and so on.) And in this thread I want to also discuss this, as well as other important investigations of the time which led to the initial HSCA investigation in the first place, such as the Church Committee which exposed many dangerous and rather frightening operations led by agencies with-in the American government, the FBI for example, the CIA etc..

Bearing this in mind I do admit that the main reasoning for posting this thread here and now though is indeed the JFK case. My reasoning for this will become clearer as you read this thread - See, they concluded in 1979, first coming about 3 years before however, in regards to the JFK assassination, that a "Probable Conspiracy" had indeed taken place, this investigation being only second to the famous and extremely well known Warren Commission, the official report diligently claiming the opposite and which is still being pushed leaving the other investigations little room for discussion and acknowledgment amongst most people.

With opening this thread here and now, I want to try and take the opportunity to give a bit more publicity to some of these very important yet unfortunately lesser known investigations which took place around the 60's, 70's and beyond, not just the HSCA, but others which exposed many, many secrets about Illegal government activities and I'd also like to take the opportunity to go into some detail on exactly what they the HSCA in particular, as this is the main reason behind starting this thread, claimed, what they found, why they felt the need to officially push that a conspiracy had taken place and what information they chose to suppress and hide from public view as it does seem they hid at least some important and crucial information.

Thanks to those who've taken the time to read so far, I do hope you continue..

Birth of the HSCA

The HSCA had a rather awkward birth let's say. To date it's seen as and largely regarded as the second largest investigation ever undertaken on the JFK Assassination (this despite it investigating more than just the JFK case at length), second only to the famous Warren Commission I'm sure most reading know at least something about. For those who do not, as I'm sure not everyone reading this thread will be familiar with this case, here's some hopefully helpful links:

- Wikipedia - The Warren Commission

- MaryFerrell.Org - Warren Commission

- Archives.Gov - The Warren Commission Report

- Spartacus.Schoolnet - The Warren Commission

The Warren Commission first began on the 29th of November, 1963, a week after the assassination it was investigating. It finally published publicly It's final conclusions on the 24th of September, 1964, almost a full year later. Despite such an in-depth investigation which produced an 888 page report, many people have come to disagree with their conclusions. This being a far cry from the initial public reaction which was largely in support of their findings, ones which were far away indeed from any kind of possible Conspiracy-related conclusion.

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(Members of the Warren Commission)

I've published a couple of thread's here on ATS criticizing their conclusions, one of my last being this one looking at their most famous and well known conclusion, the contentious single bullet theory: A Look at the Single Bullet Theory..

What does this have to do with the HSCA investigation however? Well, in the 60's, the vast majority of people seemingly subscribed to the Warren Commissions conclusions as I just mentioned above, conclusions which portrayed Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin, as a loner, communism sympathizer, ex-marine gone off the rails. They claimed he was solely responsible for the slaying of JFK, J. D. Tippit and had no ties to any other organisation with-in or outside of any government agency.

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(Oswald's assassination)

They also claimed Jack Ruby, Oswald's killer (pictured above seconds prior to the slaying) a few days after he is said to have killed the above mentioned 2 people, had no connections to any such mentioned above agencies nor did he have any connection to Oswald previously. Well, towards the end of the 60's and coming into the 70's, particularly the mid-70's, public support started to wane more and more and more..

On the 6th of March, 1975, the first ever public television showing of the famous Zapruder film (the only video showing the full assassination taking place), which can be seen below, and was shown a full 12 years after it was first recorded and was then locked away, was made on Good Night America presented by Robert Groden and Dick Gregory. Around this time, many Warren Commission critics also started to re-surface now gaining more and more publicity, as well as of course a following.



This then helped in setting up a new investigation to quell some of these new theorists and once and for all put to bed the JFK assassination. This of course did not happen as even today most people seem to reject the conclusions of the first official investigation. Before the HSCA investigation came about though another had emerged in 1975, the year of the showing of the Zapruder film. This is known commonly as the Church Committee, named after Frank Church leading the investigation. It was initially set up to investigate the way in which the CIA and the FBI had gained Intelligence, as well as investigate their illegal activities, particularly in wake of the recent Watergate Scandal which had come to surface a few years previously.

Some of their conclusions were genuinely fascinating and are still quite largely unknown:

Church comes up with this conclusion to his examination of this issue: “In examining the CIA’s past and present use of the U.S. media, the Committee finds two reasons for concern. The first is the potential, inherent in covert media operations, for manipulating or incidentally misleading the American public. The second is the damage to the credibility and independence of a free press which may be caused by covert relationships with the U.S. journalists and media organizations.”

The committee also reported that the Central Intelligence Agency had withheld from the Warren Commission, during its investigation of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, information about plots by the Government of the United States against Fidel Castro of Cuba; and that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had conducted a counter-intelligence program (COINTELPRO) against Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

The Mafia boss, Sam Giancana was ordered to appear before the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. However, before he could appear, on 19th June, 1975, Giancana was murdered in his own home. He had a massive wound in the back of the head. He had also been shot six times in a circle around the mouth. At the same time Jimmy Hoffa, another man the committee wanted to interview, also disappeared. His body was never found.

Johnny Roselli was also due to appear before Church's committee when he was murdered and in July 1976 his body was found floating in an oil drum in Miami's Dumfoundling Bay. Jack Anderson, of the Washington Post, interviewed Roselli just before he was killed. On 7th September, 1976, the newspaper reported Roselli as saying : "When Oswald was picked up, the underworld conspirators feared he would crack and disclose information that might lead to them. This almost certainly would have brought a massive U.S. crackdown on the Mafia. So Jack Ruby was ordered to eliminate Oswald."

As a result of Church's report and the deaths of Sam Giancana, Jimmy Hoffa and Johnny Roselli, Congress established the House Select Committee on Assassinations in September 1976. The resolution authorized a 12-member select committee to conduct an investigation of the circumstances surrounding the deaths of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King.

(Source)

For anyone interested, here are some sources on the Church Committee:

Wikipedia - Church Committee

Their documents can also be found here:

Full list is here

- Interim Report: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders

- Volume 1: Unauthorized Storage of Toxic Agents

- Volume 2: Huston Plan

- Volume 3: Internal Revenue Service

- Volume 4: Mail Opening

- Volume 5: The National Security Agency and Fourth Amendment Rights

- Volume 6: Federal Bureau of Investigation

- Volume 7: Covert Action

- Book I: Foreign and Military Intelligence

- Book II: Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans

- Book III: Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans

- Book IV: Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Foreign and Military Intelligence

- Book V: The Investigation of the Assassination of President J.F.K.: Performance of the Intelligence Agencies

- Book VI: Supplementary Reports on Intelligence Activities

Also, here are some useful links on some of the information found in the above external material posted:

- Biography: Sam Giancana

- Johnny Roselli

- The Mysterious Disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa

- The Life and Times of John Hoover - Cointelpro Post

- Cointelpro: The FBI's Covert Action Programs Against American Citizens

- How Americas Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up

As well as the previous posted findings on activities by those who are supposed to be in positions to serve and protect the people, as well as some of the above links posted on said people, this is also worth more than a mention at this time as well:

Church's committee also discovered that the Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation had sent anonymous letters attacking the political beliefs of targets in order to induce their employers to fire them. Similar letters were sent to spouses in an effort to destroy marriages. The committee also documented criminal break-ins, the theft of membership lists and misinformation campaigns aimed at provoking violent attacks against targeted individuals.

One of those people targeted was Martin Luther King. The FBI mailed King a tape recording made from microphones hidden in hotel rooms. The tape was accompanied by a note suggesting that the recording would be released to the public unless King committed suicide.

In September, 1975, a subcommittee under Richard Schweiker was asked to investigate the performance of the intelligence agencies concerning the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

In its final report, issued in April 1976, the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities concluded: “Domestic intelligence activity has threatened and undermined the Constitutional rights of Americans to free speech, association and privacy. It has done so primarily because the Constitutional system for checking abuse of power has not been applied.” The committee also revealed details for the first time of what the CIA called Operation Mockingbird.

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Cointelpro in particular was being uncovered much more at this time, particularly the suspicious death of Fred Hampton for which the Cointelpro program had an undercover spy working for them (William O'Neal) getting close to Hampton. A short while before his death he, O'Neal, gave them information on the whereabouts of Hampton, in particular the whereabouts of his bedroom inside his apartment. His apartment was then raided on the 4th of December, 1969. Hampton was shot in the head it's claimed at point blank range shortly after the raid and after being drugged by O'Neal (so he wouldn't wake up during the raid) and it was later found after an investigation that most of the gunshots were aimed in the apartment (as opposed to being shot from the apartment which was the original claims by those raiding), it's claimed by some witnesses in a direct effort to silence Hampton and the Civil rights movement.

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(Fred Hampton Prior to his Murder)

Due to the overall findings by the Church Committee, which massively destroyed the reputation of the CIA, FBI or any other government agency, for which there yet to recover from, it was finally decided that a new investigation on the JFK Assassination, as well as the Martin Luther King assassination due to the uncovering of Cointelpro and it's rather aggressive use against him, would have to take place.

Some sources on the above claims can be found here:

- Operation Mockingbird

- The FBI’s Attempt to Blackmail Martin Luther King Into Suicide

- A Short History of FBI Cointelpro

After a year or so of "in-fighting", It was finally decided that the new investigation after the Church Committee would take place in 1976, a year later, and would be primarily under the guidance of G. Robert Blakey who was it’s Chief Counsel and Staff Director.

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(Blakey in more recent times)

After a year or so of "in-fighting", It was finally decided that the new investigation after the Church Committee would take place in 1976, a year later, and would be primarily under the guidance of G. Robert Blakey who was it’s Chief Counsel and Staff Director. Originally chaired Thomas N. Downing, someone whom believed there was a conspiracy to assassinate JFK, who was then, despite a not so bad reputation, treated horrendously particularly by the media, character assassination at it's very worst, this eventually forcing him to resign. Blakey then took over. It can perhaps be argued that if Downing continued to chair the committee, we may know much more about this case. Upon his resignation Representative Henry Gonzalez of Texas, who may be better known on ATS as being someone who introduced legislation calling for the impeachment of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, was quoted as saying "Strong Forces have combined to stop the Inquiry at any cost", Source: Book: Crossfire: Page 524, line 6-7.

He quickly set about organizing the committee; such as who would be appointed to investigate what, what they would be primarily focusing on while individually investigating and everything else of this nature too. Some of the main staff included:

- Thomas N. Downing
- Louis Stokes
- L. Richardson Preyer
- Walter E. Fauntroy
- Yvonne Brathwaite Burke
- Christopher Dodd
- Harold Ford, Sr
- Floyd Fithian
- Robert W. Edgar
- Samuel L. Devine
- Stewart McKinney
- Charles Thone
- Harold S. Sawyer

The HSCA investigation officially began in 1976 and was active for 3 years time publishing it’s conclusions in 1979.

The HSCA Investigations

To know at what extent the HSCA chose to investigate the Martin Luther King assassination for example is, today, not yet fully known it would seem. Unfortunately there is no equivalent of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, an act passed by Congress on October 26, 1992, in order to publish and then collect for research purposes the many thousands of documents, notes, pieces of potential importance relating in some way to the case.

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Due to this small fact, the JFK assassination is far more along let's say than the Luther king case, this being one of the reasons that whenever the HSCA is mentioned, the topic of JFK as opposed to Luther king, is the main focus of attention and discussion. It's not because one is more important than the other, its because of the amount of information we have to look at.

Funnily enough, some of the information we happen to have about the MLK case has only come about due to the documents released under the JFK records act:

The voluminous files of the HSCA remain sealed for no good reason. Those few files which mistakenly leaked out with the JFK files included the startlingly open discussion of Ray's aliases quoted above and copies of King "surveillance take" which made it into the hands of the CIA's JMWAVE station. There is likely more.

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Now, for those who may not be fully familiar with the records act, here is some hopefully helpful information:

The Act requires that each assassination record be publicly disclosed in full, and be available in the collection no later than the date that is 25 years after the date of enactment of the Act (i.e., October 26, 2017), unless the President of the United States certifies that: (1) continued postponement is made necessary by an identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or conduct of foreign relations; and (2) the identifiable harm is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure.

The Act established, as an independent agency, the Assassination Records Review Board to consider and render decisions when a U.S. government office sought to postpone the disclosure of assassination records. The Board met for four years, from October 1, 1994 to September 30, 1998. When the Act was passed in 1992, 98 percent of all Warren Commission documents had been released to the public. By the time the Board disbanded, all Warren Commission documents, except income tax returns, had been released to the public, with only minor redactions.

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This huge collection of JFK documents can also be found here for anyone interested:

The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection

- Search the Database
There's approximately 268,116 documents to be found here on the National Archive website.

- Review the JFK Collection Register
These are general lists at the series level, with numbers of boxes for each item.

- Examine Folder Title Lists.
These finding aids describe all records in the collection that are not included in the JFK Database.

- Search ARC for 194 Digitized Assassination Collection Documents and Images.
Primary information here are of well known information and artefacts collected by the Warren Commission such as Bullet Fragments, the rifle used, the Motorcade (such as the cracked windshield for example), and more.

According to what information we do have on the Luther King murder we know that the HSCA concluded the following:

- Ray fired the shot that killed King, from the rooming house bathroom window.

- Ray's "Raoul" story was "not worthy of belief, and may have been invented partly to cover for help received from his brothers John and Jerry."

- There was a "likelihood" of conspiracy. In particular, the HSCA focused on an alleged $50,000 bounty on King's life offered in St. Louis.

Information on Ray can be found here for those not familiar with him:

- Wikipedia: James Earl Ray

- James Earl Ray: The Man Who Killed Dr. Martin Luther King

- James Earl Ray | Crime Magazine

We also know that he, King, was being closely watched by the government and in particular the FBI which was at that time under the control of a certain John Edgar Hoover, someone who greatly despised the Civil rights movement as well as Martin Luther King. I discussed him at length in this thread of mine here: The Life and Times of John Hoover - COINTELPRO Post

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(James Earl Ray)

We also know that Cointelpro was a very real program and was being used to tackle King among other Civil Rights leaders as well as even more people yet. Threat’s were made against King by various sources, letters by the FBI were sent to him trying to force him into committing suicide, bounties were placed on his head through various sources and so on. The HSCA, as mentioned above, also concluded that there is a very real possibility of a conspiracy involving his murder.

From a few days after his confession right to the day he died, Martin Luther Kings murderer, James Earl Ray, mentioned and linked above, has maintained his innocence about the crime, even when faced with members of the surviving King family. Despite the fact that the HSCA even concluded that there was the possibility of a conspiracy taking place, although concluding Ray fired the shots, some sources out there still claimed that they, as well as the Warren Commission, failed it’s investigative duties.

Some of these and other HSCA findings are on more solid ground than others. The otherwise-detailed HSCA Final Report is also silent on some issues, most glaringly Ray's sophisticated use of aliases. The alias issue was well-known to the Committee - in executive session Congressman Lehner on one occasion noted that this "would indicate that a rather sophisticated operation was at work, and this would not fit in, as Mr. McKinney has stated, with the background of Ray as we know him..."

The HSCA was also aware of a $100,000 bounty offer on Dr. King which was being offered by the White Knights of Mississippi. A number of post-assassination leads pointed to the possibility that members of the White Knights were involved in some fashion with the attack on Dr. King.

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All in all the HSCA concluded that and, I quote "there is a likelihood that James Earl Ray assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King as a result of a conspiracy."

For research or purely interest purposes, here are some rather interesting ATS thread's on the subject:

- The Death of Martin Luther King

- Who Killed Martin Luther King, Jr.? ATS MIX Show 74

- Martin Luther King Jr: The Case Reviewed

- The Assassination Of Dr. MLK Jr.

- I've discussed the assassination to some degree in this thread here which was also linked before in this thread: The Life and Times of John Hoover

The JFK assassination is, today, a bit different to the Martin Luther King assassination in large part due to the Assassination Records Review Board, ARRB for short. A link to these can also be found here:

Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB)

- ARRB Final Report

- ARRB Medical Testimony

- ARRB Additional Medical Interviews

- ARRB Master Set of Medical Exhibits

- ARRB CIA Testimony

- ARRB Staff Memos

Information collected, it would seem, is still being digested by researchers and to the date of this posting all of the available information that should be released is yet to be released. By 2017 they all should be I believe.

The investigation they, the HSCA, chose to conduct, as opposed to the Warren Commission which was obviously incredibly biased, was rather unique in the sense that it chose not to primarily focus on witness testimonies or anything else like this, particularly due to the fact that the Assassination of JFK had occurred over a decade before at that point and it would be utterly foolish to do so, so instead they chose to primarily focus on available scientific, medical and physical evidence to come to their own conclusions.

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After years of investigation they finally published their findings on the JFK case. They concluded that, and I quote, "Kennedy was probably killed as a result of a conspiracy," but this was in large part due to some of their latter findings surrounding a dictabelt recording of the assassination which, they claimed, seemed to suggest 2 gunmen firing more than 3 shots. to be specific. One located in the Texas Schoolbook Depository Building and one positioned rather conveniently on the Grassy Knoll, the position many researchers over time have come to believe was also a shooting position.

Even so, some still believe that the HSCA, much like the WC, also failed in their investigative duties and could've blown this case wide open, but was unable to do so. Something claimed by their own Chief Council in later years it seems.

With the declassification of the HSCA’s files in the 1990s, researchers know much more about that body’s internal workings. In the areas of the medical evidence and Oswald’s trip to Mexico City, two areas the Committee focused heavily on, it is clear that the HSCA did not tell all that it discovered.

Based on new evidence indicating CIA withholding of key information, HSCA Chief Counsel Robert Blakey in 2003 wrote a scathing letter about CIA obstruction of the HSCA inquiry

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Some searching comes up with this letter:

I am no longer confident that the Central Intelligence Agency co-operated with the committee. My reasons follow:

The committee focused, among other things, on (1) Oswald, (2) in New Orleans, (3) in the months before he went to Dallas, and, in particular, (4) his attempt to infiltrate an anti-Castro group, the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil or DRE.

These were crucial issues in the Warren Commission's investigation; they were crucial issues in the committee's investigation. The Agency knew it full well in 1964; the Agency knew it full well in 1976-79. Outrageously, the Agency did not tell the Warren Commission or our committee that it had financial and other connections with the DRE, a group that Oswald had direct dealings with!

What contemporaneous reporting is or was in the Agency's DRE files? We will never know, for the Agency now says that no reporting is in the existing files. Are we to believe that its files were silent in 1964 or during our investigation?

I don't believe it for a minute. Money was involved; it had to be documented. Period. End of story. The files and the Agency agents connected to the DRE should have been made available to the commission and the committee. That the information in the files and the agents who could have supplemented it were not made available to the commission and the committee amounts to willful obstruction of just....

(Source - Please continue reading here)

In this next section I will go into a bit more detail on what they, the HSCA, seem to have stumbled across which led them to conclude a probable conspiracy had taken place.

The Acoustic "Evidence" And Conclusions of Conspiracy

This is perhaps the most crucial finding ever in regards to the JFK assassination case, certainly the most crucial finding for the HSCA investigation in particular. It's what caused them to suddenly veer off from concluding that the Warren Commission were in fact more than likely correct in their findings to suddenly disagreeing with them and head in another direction, one aiming towards the possibility of conspiracy occurring at one point or another.

It is of course the now rather well known and controversial dictabelt recording which was discovered a short while after the assassination, locked away until the late 60's and then finally brought to the attention of the HSCA committee by Mary Ferrell. Her website can also be found here: MaryFerrellFoundation.Org

Here is the Dictabelt recording in full, this the original and posted on my own Youtube account I set up:



The dictabelt recording was originally captured from an open mike stuck in the open position from one of the Police Motorcycles assigned somewhere to the Presidential motorcade and is said to have captured an audio of the assassination taking place, crucially the amount of shots fired. After being recorded it's said to have been discovered by Dallas Police Lieutenant Paul McCaghren who then submitted his reports on the recordings which were then handed to Police Chief Jesse Curry and for whatever reason went onto be locked away until the late 60's.

In 1969 I believe they were re-opened thanks to a newly appointed Chief, these files being opened as well as others. They were then given to Paul in 1969 as he was the Director of the Intelligence Division of the Police Department. They were then released and brought to the attention of the committee by Ms. Ferrell in 1978 when they were nearing the end of their investigations.

Due to this very crucial detail being brought to the attention of the HSCA, it had to be used as it could then determined if the initial version of events, 3 shots, was indeed true. They of course claimed to have discovered that it did not. Instead, at least 4 shots had been fired during the assassination, one being 1.66 seconds after another, an impossibility for Oswald, or any shooter, using the Mannlicher Carcano Rifle according to tests.

The Committee set about contacting the Acoustical Society of America in search of people qualified enough to review and analyse the tapes they had been given, eventually finding help in the name of Mark Weiss and Ernest Aschkenasy who were to eventually conclude upon their investigation that "with the probability of 95% or better, there was indeed a shot fired from the grassy knoll."

Investigators compared "impulse patterns" (suspected gunshots and associated echos) on the Dictabelt to 1978 test recordings of Carcano rifles fired in Dealey Plaza from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository and from a stockade fence on the grassy knoll forward and to the right of the location of the presidential limousine. On this basis, the acoustics firm of Bolt, Beranek and Newman concluded that impulse patterns 1, 2, and 4 were shots fired from the Depository, and that there was a 50% chance that impulse pattern 3 was a shot from the grassy knoll. Acoustics analysts Mark Weiss and Ernest Aschkenasy, of Queens College, reviewed the BBN data and concluded that "with the probability of 95% or better, there was indeed a shot fired from the grassy knoll."

Dr. James E. Barger, of Bolt, Beranek and Newman, testified to the HSCA that his statistical analysis of the impulse patterns captured on the Dallas police recordings showed that the motorcycle with the open microphone was approximately "120 to 138 feet" behind the presidential limousine at the time of the first shot. When the HSCA asked Weiss about the location of the motorcycle with the open microphone—"Would you consider that to be an essential ingredient in the ultimate conclusion of your analysis?"—Weiss answered, "It is an essential component of it, because, if you do not put the motorcycle in the place that it is [at]—the initial point of where it was receiving the [sound of the gunfire]—, and if you do not move it at the velocity at which it is being moved on paper in this re-creation, you do not get a good, tight pattern that compares very well with the observed impulses on the police tape recording."

The HSCA, using an amateur film shot of the motorcade,[10] concluded that the recording originated from the motorcycle of police officer H. B. McLain, who later testified before the committee that his microphone was often stuck in the open position.

(Source)

A webpage discussing them, their testimony and who they believed was the police officer with the Open mike was, which many claimed was certainly not H. B. McLain, can be found here:

Professor Mark Weiss of the Department of Computer Science of Queens College of the City University of New York, expanded on the work of Dr. Barger. On December 28, 1978 Professor Weiss appeared before the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Here is that testimony. Dr. Barger testified again on that day. Since the motorcycle identified as having had the stuck microphone belonged to Office H.B. McLain, he also testified on that day.

Dr. Barger, and Professor Weiss also submitted reports to the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Here is the report of Bolt, Beranek & Newman, and here is the report Weiss and Aschkenasy. An additional report was made by Bolt, Beranek & Newman, relating an report analysis of the earwitness reports related to the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

The results of this study led the House select Committee to conclude that it was likely that Lee Harvey Oswald did not kill President Kennedy acting on his own, and recommended further investigation. Rather quickly these acoustic tests came under fire. After hearing the actual recording Officer McLain claimed that the recording could not have come from his motorcycle, because the sounds on it were not consistent with what he believed should have been on that tape due to his own memory of events.

(Source)

See, many people today know very little about the HSCA investigation but they do seem to know that there was a radio recording and it does seem to be the evidence people have been looking for concerning validating once and for all that a conspiracy was present as confirmed by an official investigation. Unfortunately though, much like everything else in this case as well as those like it, even the proof isn't clear-cut. It has many opponents as well as many supporters.

Photographic expert Richard E. Sprague for example, also a consultant for the HSCA investigations, was noted as highlighting the fact that there were apparently no motorcycles where the Dictabelt recordings show where they should be, in particular H.B. McLain's motorcycle. Other films also don't seem to be able to verify anyone in that particular position at that particular time thus seemingly being able to provethat a mistake occurred along the way and McLain was not the man who had captured the tape thus capturing the first audio of the assassination taking place, one which was supposed to prove there was more than one gunman firing thus going onto prove a conspiracy had taken place in some form.

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H.B. McLain, the man suspected of capturing the dictabelt recording

What he did discover on the other hand was that McLain, who was supposed to be 120 to 138 feet behind the Limousine at the time of the shooting taking place, instead was actually much closer to 250 feet away. Steve Barber is also rather well known and responsible for highlighting that the words "Hold everything secure" could be faintly heard on the tapes as well, these words we known to have been spoken by Bill Decker about a minute or so after the assassination, this coming about unfortunately after the HSCA was to conclude their findings publicly.

And finally one of the last main critiques of the Dictabelt findings came from McLain himself. See, he had only heard it after the committee had concluded and upon hearing he confirmed that there was no possible way, taking into his own account of what he remembered doing, that the sounds being heard didn't match his movement, the movements of those around him being heard and so on.

Despite the fact that he also accompanied the motorcade to Parkland Hospital immediately after the shooting, this with sirens blaring the entire time, but any sirens that could be heard on the Audio were rising and receding in pitch as if they was going past the recording. There was also no crowd noise, this despite the fact that Main street was covered with people desperate to catch a glimpse of the President going past them. Finally, McLain himself even said that the engine sound which could be heard was even very likely to have come from one of the three-wheeled motorcycles, not one similar to his two-wheeler, citing "There's no comparison to the two sounds."

The Justice Department even went to the trouble of paying for the National Academy of Sciences to review the validity of claims made by the investigation which then resulted in what we know as the Ramsey Panel, after Dr. Norman Ramsey. In 1982 they issued their final report and concluded that "there was no compelling evidence for gunshots on the recording and that the HSCA's suspect impulses were recorded about a minute after the shooting happened."

The Ramsey Report can be found here:

In reply to this however, I shall post this detailed piece:

Dr. Barger, the HSCA's acoustics expert, when asked about this discovery and the NAS analysis, replied, Barber discovered a very weak spoken phrase on the DPD Dictabelt recording that is heard at about the time of the sound impulses we concluded were probably caused by the fourth shot. The NAS Committee has shown to our satisfaction that this phrase has the same origin as the same phrase heard also on the Audograph recording. The Audograph recording was originally made from the channel 2 radio. The common phrase is heard on channel 2 about a minute after the assassination would appear, from the context, to have taken place.

Therefore, it would seem . . . that the sounds that we connected with gunfire were made about a minute after the assassination shots were fired. Upon reading the NAS report, we did a brief analysis of the Audograph dub that was made by the NAS Committee and loaned to us by them. We found some enigmatic features of this recording that occur at about the time that individuals react to the assassination. Therefore, we have doubt about the time synchronization of events on that recording, and so we doubt that the Barber hypothesis is proven. The NAS Committee did not examine the several items of evidence that corroborated our original findings, so that we still agree with the House Select Committee on Assassinations conclusion that our findings were corroborated

(Source)

The reader of this thread will make up their own minds I imagine. Here are some various websites out there dedicated to this issue for further reading:

- McAdams.com - Acoustic Evidence of Conspiracy?

- Wikipedia - Dictabelt evidence relating to the assassination of John F. Kennedy

- The acoustic evidence in the
Kennedy assassination by Michael O'Dell

- Study Backs Theory of 'Grassy Knoll'

On a final note I'll post the very thing I'm discussing here in this thread, the HSCA conclusions, in full. To find all of the HSCA findings and papers, here they are currently listed on the History-Matters website, this being one of many.

HSCA Final Assassinations Report

- HSCA Final Assassination Report - Hearings and Appendix Volumes

- 1996 Release: Oswald, the CIA, and Mexico City ("Lopez Report")

- 2003 Release: Oswald, the CIA, and Mexico City ("Lopez Report")

- HSCA Executive Session Transcripts

- HSCA Security Classified Testimony

- HSCA Medical Testimony and Interviews

- HSCA Other Unpublished Testimony

- HSCA Numbered Files

Thanks to all of those who took the time to read this entire thread, and especially to those who clicked most of the links, I hope this thread was interesting and was at least somewhat educational for you.

I’d appreciate hearing your thoughts.

reply to post by Rising Against


Well RA another well written thread S&F. A most interesting thread. I believe that there was indeed a conspiracy in all these killings. JFK,RFK,MLK, were all assinated in order to remove them from the way of the people who seized control of the country. They were in the way and were subsequently removed. I believe that LBJ was involved and others such as the Bush's were involved. However they covered their tracks so well that we may never know for sure that they were involved.

I think that those three men were opposed to the takeover of the US government by these people. The US has steadily moved to remove the rights of the American citizen since those three men were removed. The deconstruction of the American Constitution has proceeded unchecked since they were removed to the point where we have very few rights left. They are still trying to remove the second amendment. They are having a bit of trouble getting rid of that one. As Thomas Jefferson said,"The beauty of the second amendment is that we won't need it untill they try to take it away."

Is there a conspiracy here? Yep and it reaches further that we can imagine. There are many people involved and I'm sure that much of what we see today happening here in America, is the result of the seizure of the reins of government by those conspirators.

The warren commision was a farce that was controlled by the conspirators, and I'm not entirely convinced that the subsequent investigations weren't influenced as well. The conspiracy runs deep and broad and continues to this day.

reply to post by Rising Against


As per usual an awesome thread. Not to take anything away from your others but in all honesty this one is just amazing. I'm still going through it but had to take the time to make a general observation. I am currently reading the section of the thread where Blakey takes over as head of the investigation. You've posted a more recent picture of him. Now, here are my observations of that picture in particular:

1. As soon as I saw the picture, and I looked at it prior to reading the text underneath, Blakey looks as if he is a man troubled. There is a sadness behind his eyes, his shoulder's slumped, he almost looks defeated. He carries the look of a man who has heavy burdens which he has been carrying for a long long time.

2. This struck me as very odd, and before I go on with this observation I have to ask if you know if this picture of him is an 'official' photo? I ask because if you look at his lapel pin of the US Flag, it is upside down. Now most would not pick this fact up but I did, and it is my understanding that if the flag is displayed (in any form) upside down it is an unspoken sign of distress. Now, do I think there is a conspiracy within that picture? Not necessarily, however if this is an official picture of him, someone at the photoshoot would most certainly have pointed out the pin was upside down either as merely from an aesthetic point of view or as I pointed out above as a message of distress.

Just a few observations. I'm going to read the rest and comment when done, it may be a day or so due to other things needing to be done today, but look for another comment from me soon.

reply to post by MyMindIsMyOwn


Hey Mind,

Admittedly It was just an image I found online after doing this search: Google Image Search - Robert Blakey

See, I specifically looked for the clearest one, and I then went about re-sizing the one I liked, edited it slightly to make it that bit clearer still, uploaded it to ATS and then posted. I don't know much else about the photo and admittedly, I don't think there's too much significant in it also. Just one unfortunate image.

But then again.. who knows really. Especially when taking this into consideration: G. Robert Blakey's 2003 Addendum To This Interview

Just giving this thread a quick bump. I'd hate to see it die a quick death..

reply to post by Rising Against

I don't think it will die, it just takes a lot of reading. I cannot imagine how long it took to put all this together... I need to keep taking breaks from it. Thanks Rising Against.

reply to post by LightSpeedDriver


Trust me, it's not as long as you would think. Just less than a week to go from start to finish if I remember right. Or around a week, I'm not even sure. Most of it is stuff I've looked into before so It's not a complete start if you get what I mean.

Out of curiosity what are you thoughts so far too? The Church Committee in particular is something I'm keen to have opinions on from people. They gave us a lot of important information about certain activities with-in governmental agencies..

reply to post by Rising Against

I'll be honest and admit I'm not finished but so far my overall impression is that it (the HSCA) is the latest pacification attempt to show the population that "things are being done and still investigated". They may well have brought some newer and unknown information and anomalies to the table but it still doesn't seem to go far enough to be able to actually do anything substantial about the (imho) patently obvious conspiracy to murder a president while in office but, as stated, I'm not finished reading and digesting yet, nowhere near.

Hey, it took you a week to write it, its going to talk at least a few days to really get my head round.

i think this might add to the topic at hand, at least on the side of MLK being killed by authorities

www.redicecreations.com...

the article mostly cites a washington post article

here is an embeded video also contained in the article






by the way great job on the researching and analysis

now i can go back to my history professor and show him whats what on the subject
had a little after class debate with him one day after he went over the kennedy years and said the conspiracy theorists had no real backing
the kennedy assassination was probably the first thing that got me into conspiracies

reply to post by Rising Against
Thanks again for keeping the light on this conspiracy. Although some of us have been investigating the JFK, RFK, MLK assassinations for years, it is important to continue adding fresh posts about this conspiracy so that younger generations can be aware of it and carry on the quest for transparency. I think that the younger people who read the mountain of evidence are easily convinced that there was a cover-up of the truth, but are resigned to accept that the truth will never come out. You are correct in believing that this series of prominent assassinations, and the subsequent killings of the people who knew the truth, is one of the most important issues of the past 50 years.
These events dramatically shaped the current status of our world (even if 98% of people fail to recognize it). I've always wondered how our current political, social and economic situation would differ if the JFK, RFK, MLK assassinations had not occurred. What if J. Edgar had been assassinated instead?

reply to post by TopDogCynic


Agreed, I think all these indents, like the JFK assassination for example, the RFK assassination, the MLK assassination, the murder of Fred Hampton, the killing of Malcolm X, the church committe's investigations into governmental activities, the uncovering of Cointelpro, the work of Hoover, the HSCA investigation.. everything else like this, even today, deserves to be discussed. It's important and not something we, as a whole, should forget about.

If we forget about something like that mentioned above, why wouldn't it happen again? There's no possible reason why it can't. We forget our history at our cost. And that's a shame.. because many willingly choose to forget/ignore.

Thanks for your post.

reply to post by trust_no_one


Hey Trust_no_one, thanks for that post. Like I said in my OP, too often when the discussion of the HSCA is brought up, the Luther King murder, a worthy topic of discussion, is almost all but forgotten. A true shame really.

An interesting video worth watching. It's also very short so won't take up much time.

The assassinations of Martin Luther King and JFK were by illuminati factions who know the truth that Jesus is a Myth. MLK and JFK would be alive if they didn't spew so many lies about jesus.

Originally posted by TsafirKamel
The assassinations of Martin Luther King and JFK were by illuminati factions who know the truth that Jesus is a Myth. MLK and JFK would be alive if they didn't spew so many lies about jesus.

..Ok, and any serious replies out there?

This is one of those long-ago and far-away hearings which probably still have a lot of unreleased data which still has to see the light of day (the best disinfectant, or so I've heard).

Another great thread RA! I just read Robert Blakey's letter about the CIA's obstruction of the HSCA's investigators he learned a bitter lesson about just how the US Intel community operates when faced with investigations that may see some real consequences.They obstruct,attack,whine and threaten.Robert Blakey was naive.It's interesting how the guys who were operating the JM/Wave station and were involved in Anti-Castro operations come up in everything from JFK to Watergate to Iran-Contra...