Nation: Conspiracy

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An unexpected conclusion

After spending two years and $6 million on its investigation, the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that John F. Kennedy "was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy." It said it did not know who might have conspired with Lee Harvey Oswald in the shooting, but it specifically excluded such familiar scapegoats as the FBI, the CIA, the Secret Service, the Soviet government, the Cuban government, all anti-Castro Cuban groups and the Mafia.

The committee's bewildering finding rested almost solely on one fact: acoustics experts who examined a tape recording of sounds made in Dallas' Dealey Plaza on Nov. 22, 1963, testified that they can detect four shots being fired and that one came from the grassy knoll lying ahead of the President's limousine. The committee insisted that Oswald's second and third shots hit Kennedy from behind, while the mysterious second gunman missed.

The committee said it would buttress its findings in 40 volumes of testimony and evidence to be issued this spring, but it sent its preliminary report to the Justice Department with the suggestion that further investigation is warranted. A spokesman there said Justice will await the full report before deciding what to do. The best guess: Justice has little desire for yet another assassination inquiry.