Conspiracy

On March 29, 1979, the US House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations released their report on the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King.  While the committee still backed the theory that Lee Harvey Oswald fired three times at Kennedy, killing him with the third shot, it also found, based on acoustic analysis, that Kennedy was "probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy".

The committee also found credible testimony that was used by Jim Garrison ten years earlier in the trial against Clay Shaw, to this day the only person who has been tried in court as having anything to do with Kennedy's murder.  That trial was the basis for Oliver Stone's movie JFK.  Conspiracy theories about Kennedy's assassination had been around since November 23, 1963.  But this was the first time any government agency acknowledged the probability of a conspiracy.  This report and Stone's film locked in the notion of a conspiracy that still remains.

The committee also held that while James Earl Ray was the shooter who killed Dr. King, there was also the "likelihood" there was a conspiracy involved.  Coincidentally, this was also the week in 1979 that a joint session of Congress would convene that resulted in the first proposed legislation for MLK Day.  That measure would go down to defeat, but the day honoring Dr. King would be declared in 1983.  The day remains controversial, and speculation about King's murder continues to this day...