Hearings Before the Select Committee on Assassinations
of the
U.S. House of Representatives
Ninety-Fifth Congress, Second Session
Without question, the largest body of testimony and documented evidence pertaining to the King assassination was compiled by the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978. Incredibly, most of this documentation was sealed for 50 years after the release of the HSCA's reports, doomed to be concealed from public view until the year 2029. To this day, these crucial documents are held prisoner in the darkness, gathering dust.
In the mean time, we do have access to the HSCA's twelve-volume report on its investigation of the King assassination. For various reasons, many researchers have charged that the HSCA's investigation failed to adequately investigate a possible wide-ranging assassination conspiracy. Rev. Walter Fauntroy, who chaired the HSCA's investigation of the King assassination, recently stated his support for a new investigation. "There is such a thing as coming to closure," Fauntroy said at a press conference in Atlanta in 1997. If his committee had known about some of the conspiracy allegations that have surfaced in recent years, Fauntroy said, "the investigation would have taken a more thorough look."
The HSCA ultimately concluded that James Earl Ray did fire the shot that killed Martin Luther King, but that he was "probably" involved in a conspiracy of limited scope and means. Although this is an unsatisfactory explanation, the documents included in the committee's report are nevertheless a valuable resource for King assassination researchers.
HSCA Report Main Index
Key Documents
Photographic Exhibits
Document Exhibits
