The Trump administration on Monday released over 230,000 pages of records related to the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., despite concerns expressed by King’s family.
“The American people have waited nearly sixty years to see the full scope of the federal government’s investigation into Dr. King’s assassination,” said Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard in a statement. “We are ensuring that no stone is left unturned in our mission to deliver complete transparency on this pivotal and tragic event in our nation’s history.”
Gabbard added that the documents were being published with only minimal redactions, primarily for privacy reasons.
President Donald Trump had signed an executive order shortly after taking office directing the declassification of files related to the 1960s assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr.
The National Archives previously released records on John F. Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963 in March, followed by files on Robert F. Kennedy’s murder in June 1968 released in April.
Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in April 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee. James Earl Ray was convicted of the murder and died in prison in 1998; however, King’s children have publicly questioned whether Ray was the true assassin.
In a statement issued Monday, King’s two surviving children, Martin Luther King III and Bernice King, said they “support transparency and historical accountability” but voiced concern that the release of the records could be used for “attacks on our father’s legacy.”
They noted that during King’s lifetime, he was subjected to an “invasive, predatory, and deeply disturbing disinformation and surveillance campaign” orchestrated by then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. This campaign aimed to “discredit, dismantle, and destroy Dr. King’s reputation and the broader American Civil Rights Movement,” they said. “These actions were not only invasions of privacy, but intentional assaults on the truth.”
“We ask those who engage with the release of these files to do so with empathy, restraint, and respect for our family’s continuing grief,” they added.
The Warren Commission, which investigated John F. Kennedy’s assassination, concluded that it was carried out by a lone gunman, former Marine sharpshooter Lee Harvey Oswald. Nevertheless, speculation about a larger conspiracy surrounding Kennedy’s death in Dallas, Texas, persists, fueled in part by the slow release of government files.
Robert F. Kennedy, John’s younger brother and a former attorney general, was assassinated in June 1968 while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination. Palestinian-born Jordanian Sirhan Sirhan was convicted of his murder and is currently serving a life sentence in California.
AFP
