Documents related to the 1968 assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy will be released “within the next few days,” Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said Thursday during a Cabinet meeting with President Trump.
In the first week of his administration, Mr. Trump ordered the release of thousands of classified government documents about the deaths of the civil rights leader and the brother of President John F. Kennedy, who was a Democratic presidential candidate when he was killed in 1968.
Last month, the Trump administration released a trove of documents about the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy.
While Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who was a teenager when his father was killed, said in the Cabinet meeting he was “gratified” and “grateful” for the potential release of the documents, the King family is attempting to block the immediate release of some of the files related to MLK’s death. The FBI previously released documents from a government report regarding its investigation into MLK Jr.
King family members said in a statement after the president signed his executive order that they “hope to be provided the opportunity to review the files as a family” before the release.
The civil rights icon was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968, as he stood on the balcony of the old Lorraine Motel. King, who was 39 years old, was rushed to a hospital, where he died of a bullet wound to the neck.
In a court filing submitted last week by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the civil rights group founded and run by King, lawyers for the nonprofit said that a 1977 court order requiring the documents to be sealed for 50 years should remain in place, leaving out of public view until January 2027.
In particular, the SCLC and the King family, who said the FBI “illegally surveilled” King and his SCLC colleagues at “SCLC’s offices, in places of public accommodation, and at Dr. King’s home,” from 1963 until Dr. King’s assassination, want those wiretap recordings and transcripts to remain sealed though at least the end of the 1977 court order.
The SCLC and the King family wrote that the Trump administration’s attempt to unseal the files is “without legal justification,” adding that Mr. Trump “lacks the authority to compel the disclosure of any assassination records that are under a court-ordered seal, and the sealed files—which are the result of illegal incursions on SCLC’s privacy interests—are much more expansive in scope than those pertaining to Dr. King’s assassination.”
The King family also cited mistakes with the handling of the JFK assassination files as a reason to block the release. The unredacted JFK documents released last month inadvertently revealed Social Security information. MLK’s family also argued that the early release of the files would be “contrary to the interests of SCLC, the King family, and the public.”
Both of Dr. King’s living children, Martin Luther King III and Bernice King, submitted written declarations opposing the release. King’s son argued that the recordings, which include some made in the King family home, constitute an invasion of privacy.
“We respectfully disagree that the public release of the sealed records is a benefit for our family,” King III wrote, adding, “We also disagree that our family and the general public stand on equal footing with respect to illicit recordings made of our family home. Private spaces by definition exclude the public; our family’s privacy deserves the same protection and respect as any other family in America.”
The wiretaps, Martin Luther King III wrote, were part of an effort to discredit his father and “harm the civil rights cause that he championed.”
“Some, perhaps many, of the recordings may be fake,” he continued. “The FBI’s purpose in creating the documents the government seeks to unseal was to misinform the public and irreparably damage our father’s reputation and most importantly destroy the civil rights movement. Such an effort against a private citizen is unprecedented.”
Bernice King wrote that the release would cause “irreparable harm” of her father’s legacy, “due to the history of fabricated assertions and disinformation” from then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. Her brother wrote that any release would “unleash J. Edgar Hoover’s deception on the public by presenting misinformation as objective historical record.”
There are allegations that the FBI was complicit in King’s assassination, and a select committee conducted its own investigation. The National Archives noted that the committee “recognized that FBI files were potentially tainted,” but it never uncovered evidence to show complicity by the bureau in his killing. The committee “did note major deficiencies in the scope and method of the FBI’s post-assassination investigation,” the Archives said.
The FBI conducted surveillance of King for years, targeting him with a counterintelligence program known as COINTELPRO. A Senate select committee investigated and published a report exposing the “full scope of the attempt by the FBI to discredit Dr. King,” the Archives noted.
In 1977, the Justice Department launched a task force to probe the FBI’s harassment and investigations of King, as well as his assassination and the criminal investigation. It also attempted to determine whether the FBI bore any responsibility for King’s assassination. The task force concluded that James Earl Ray acted alone in killing King, but it found that the FBI’s actions involving COINTELPRO’s efforts to undermine King should not have been continued and were “very probably…felonious.”
