Episode 61 - Why Did It Matter So Much Who Led the HSCA? (HSCA, Part I)

For more content from Barry Jones, go to sphistory.com. The Warren Commission was rigged. J. Edgar Hoover controlled the evidence. Allen Dulles controlled the committee. Thirteen years later, the HSCA was also rigged. When Congressman Downing and Chief Counsel Richard Sprague made clear their intentions of beginning their investigations with the CIA and its contrived Mexico City story, the Agency sprang into action, having its minions in Congress and the media smear both men and the HSCA publicly. The resulting power struggle left Downing and Sprague out in the cold, replaced by a compliant Congressman Stokes and an easily-duped HSCA Director G. Robert Blakey. The CIA offered a limited hangout - JFK was killed by a conspiracy of anti-Castro Cubans, Lee Harvey Oswald and organized crime - while maintaining its own (and the FBI's) plausible deniability. What began with so much promise was compromised by the intelligence community again.