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. The HSCA completed its investigation in 1978 and issued its final report the following year, concluding that Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. 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 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 the Soviet Union or Cuba. The committee also stated that the conspiracy did not involve any organized crime group, anti-Castro group, nor the FBI, CIA, or Secret Service.
In a 1988 Justice Department memo to the House Judiciary Committee, 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”.