In the wake of Watergate and President Richard Nixon's resignation in 1974, a "reform" Congress undertook investigations of the FBI, CIA, and other intelligence agencies--the Church Committee published 14 reports containing its findings. With the public airing of the Zapruder home movie of the JFK assassination showing Kennedy reacting to an apparent shot from the front, there were calls for reinvestigation of this and other political assassinations of the 1960s.

In 1976, the House Select Committee on Assassinations undertook reinvestigations of the murders of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1979, a single Report and twelve volumes of appendices on each assassination were published by the Congress. In the JFK case, the HSCA found that there was a "probable conspiracy," though it was unable to determine the nature of that conspiracy or its other participants (besides Oswald). This finding was based in part on acoustics evidence from a tape purported to record the shots, but was also based on other evidence including an investigation of Ruby's underworld connections. The acoustics evidence was disputed by a panel of scientists, but that "debunking" has itself come under attack recently.

The massive internal files of the HSCA were unsealed in the wake of the 1992 JFK Assassination Records Collection Act. Still being digested by researchers, they have shed more light on the assassination itself and also on the conduct of the HSCA's investigation. Contained herein are some of the more important documents from that collection, including the long-desired "Lopez Report" and many formerly-secret depositions.