April 18 (UPI) — The federal government on Friday released the first tranche of approximately 50,000 pages of classified documents related to the investigation into the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968.
Friday’s release consists of around 10,000 pages of documents that are now available on the National Archives.
Last month, President Donald Trump’s administration released approximately 80,000 documents related to the November 22, 1963, assassination of former President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas.
After taking office in January, Trump signed an executive order to release tens of thousands of classified documents related to the assassinations of both Kennedy brothers and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s department was charged with collecting and digitizing the unredacted documents, which have been stored in several federal facilities.
“The DIG partnered with The National Archives and other agency officials to manually scan and upload over 10,000 pages, for online viewing by the American people, to fulfill President Trump’s maximum transparency promise,” Gabbard said in a statement on her department’s website.
Further documents related to the Robert F. Kennedy assassination will be made public once they are processed.
Kennedy’s son, current U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., applauded the news.
“Lifting the veil on the RFK papers is a necessary step toward restoring trust in American government,” Kennedy, Jr. said in the DIG statement.
“I commend President Trump for his courage and his commitment to transparency. I’m grateful also to Tulsi Gabbard for her dogged efforts to root out and declassify these documents.”
Hardly any of the documents related to King’s April 4, 1968, assassination in Memphis, Tenn., and Robert F. Kennedy’s death in Los Angeles had been catalogued, scanned and digitized, instead sitting in boxes in federal warehouses in different locations.
A large number of files related to John F. Kennedy’s assassination were identified and ordered released following the federal government’s passing of The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. The Act mandated the release of the JFK records, many of which carry heavy redactions.
Trump has ordered their unredacted release and Gabbard on Friday applauded the president’s pledge to adhere to “maximum transparency” in all three cases.
“Nearly 60 years after the tragic assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, the American people will, for the first time, have the opportunity to review the federal government’s investigation thanks to the leadership of President Trump. My team is honored that the President entrusted us to lead the declassification efforts and to shine a long-overdue light on the truth. I extend my deepest thanks for Bobby Kennedy and his families’ support,” Gabbard said in Friday’s statement.
Robert F. Kennedy was shot while celebrating a victory in the California presidential primary at a Los Angeles hotel.
A 12-member jury in 1969 found Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian-Jordanian national, guilty of murder and sentenced him to death. His sentence was commuted to life in prison and the now 81-year-old remains incarcerated at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in California.
Despite the conviction, the circumstances around Kennedy’s death in a crowd have sparked conspiracy theories that Sirhan did not pull the trigger, leading to ongoing calls to declassify government records related to the assassination and subsequent investigations.
