In 1976, the US Senate ordered a fresh inquiry into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, who was murdered in 1963 during a motorcade in Dallas, Texas while campaigning for re-election. People who had been involved in the original Warren Commission investigations were asked to make fresh statements. The FBI and the CIA were persuaded to release more of their documents on Oswald. New lines of inquiry were opened and individuals who had not previously given evidence were persuaded to come forward. Most important of all, pieces of evidence such as photos and sound recordings were subjected to scientific analysis using the most up-to-date methods and equipment. The House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) completed their investigation in 1979 and they finally came to a discrete verdict that Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots at Kennedy, one of which killed the president. A fourth shot was fired from the grassy knoll, which was contradictory to the statement printed by the Warren Commission 16 years earlier. They concluded that John Kennedy was assassinated as the result of a conspiracy. The investigation was ordered directly after the assassinations of two other major political figures; the civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King and the President’s brother Robert Kennedy, in 1968. Naturally these incidents aroused immense suspicion and the American public started questioning why so many key US figures had been assassinated in the space of just four years, when previously this type of incident had been rare. The HCSA was interested in looking into the possibility that the assassinations were related. At the time there was also an increasing awareness of corruption and scandal within the government. The Watergate Scandal in 1974 involving President Nixon had clearly shown that American government was not entirely free of foul play. As a result