Trump administration releases records on Martin Luther King Jr. assassination. Here's what we know.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence said the documents, which number over 230,000 pages, "had never been digitized and sat collecting dust in facilities across the federal government for decades, until today."
The records include the FBI's "discussion of potential leads, internal FBI memos detailing the progress of the case, and documents related to James Earl Ray's former cellmate, who stated he discussed with Ray an alleged assassination plot," according to ODNI. The agency says the release also includes CIA records on the search for Ray, who fled the U.S. before he was eventually captured and pleaded guilty to assassinating King.
"The American people have waited nearly sixty years to see the full scope of the federal government's investigation into Dr. King's assassination," Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said in a statement.
A CBS News review found many of the documents released Monday focus on the FBI's role prior to MLK's assassination and its investigation of his death. Much of what is in the documents confirms long-established facts. Also included in the disclosure are newspaper clippings and records from other arms of government.
ODNI called Monday's release "the first time these records are published online in one collection with minimal redactions," though it said some records had been made public previously through Freedom of Information Act requests.
It is not clear that the latest document release adds significantly to what was already known about King's assassination and the events that precipitated and followed it.
The FBI surveilled and pursued King for years leading up to his death, suspicious of some members of the civil rights movement's ties to communism. A 1977 Justice Department report concluded the surveillance of King was "very probably" illegal, noting the FBI had "no evidence whatsoever that Dr. King was ever a communist" and that one adviser of his in the early 1960s had "disassociated himself" from the Communist Party.
One page in the files released Monday references an FBI technical surveillance operation of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1965 that allegedly found "communist influence" on the SCLC through King. It alleges contacts between King and individuals "with communist backgrounds."
A 1963 memo from assistant FBI director W.C. Sullivan says King "stands head and shoulders over all other Negro leaders put together when it comes to influencing great masses of Negroes. We must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this Nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro and national security."
There is also one audio recording: an interview with Jerry Ray, the brother of James Earl Ray. Jerry Ray said his brother never mentioned King or his feelings about "negroes" to him, and did not believe his brother assassinated King.
ODNI said King's relatives were "provided an opportunity to review the files" two weeks ago.
Prior to the release, some relatives of King pushed back on the plan, saying: "For us, the assassination of our father is a deeply personal family loss that we have endured over the last 56 years. We hope to be provided the opportunity to review the files as a family prior to its public release."
King's two living children, Bernice King and Martin Luther King III, said in a statement Monday they understood the records have "long been a subject of interest," but urged people to engage with the files "with empathy, restraint, and respect for our family's continued grief."
The statement — released by the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change — pointed to the FBI's yearslong surveillance of King in the 1960s.
"While we support transparency and historical accountability, we object to any attacks on our father's legacy or attempts to weaponize it to spread falsehoods," the family members said. "Those who promote the fruit of the FBI's surveillance will unknowingly align themselves with an ongoing campaign to degrade our father and the Civil Rights Movement."
Bernice King addressed the release of the files in a "Vanity Fair" article Monday, writing, "I wonder why I have to be confronted once again with something that was very confusing and distressing for me as a five-year-old. I am, honestly, not prepared to revisit the gruesome details of this painful history. For me, there is no real value in it; there is only reliving the trauma."
King's niece, Alveda King, said in ODNI's statement that she supported the release, calling it "a historic step towards the truth that the American people deserve."
Shortly after returning to office, Mr. Trump ordered the government to declassify and release federal records on President John F. Kennedy's 1963 assassination, along with the 1968 killings of King and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. Records on JFK were released in March, and the government released several tranches of documents on RFK starting in April.
All three assassinations have drawn decades of public curiosity, including theories about whether the people accused and convicted of assassinating the three men acted alone or were even responsible for the killings.
Ray pleaded guilty to murdering King in Memphis one year after the assassination, and was sentenced to 99 years in prison, but he later recanted his guilty plea and spent years unsuccessfully seeking a new trial. He died in 1998.
Members of King's family have contended that Ray was not the shooter. Their statement Monday pointed to a 1999 wrongful death suit in Tennessee civil court in which a jury concluded a man named Loyd Jowers and other co-conspirators, "including government agencies," were linked to King's assassination.
Other official findings have varied. The Justice Department conducted reviews of the assassination in 1977 and 2000, which asserted that Ray was the assassin and that he didn't act as part of a conspiracy. In the 1970s, the House Select Committee on Assassinations found that King was likely assassinated as part of a conspiracy involving Ray, but that the government wasn't involved.
Meanwhile, Mr. Trump has faced pressure from across the political spectrum — including from his supporters — to release government records on the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, after some members of his administration promised to disclose more information on the late financier. Last week, the Justice Department asked a court to unseal grand jury testimony from Epstein's 2019 child sex trafficking case.
Late Monday, after records on her father were released, Bernice King wrote on X: "Now, do the Epstein files."
Arden Farhi, Julia Kimani Burnham, Ashley Walton, James LaPorta and Allyson Ross-Taylor contributed to this report.
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