US releases thousands of files related to Robert F Kennedy assassination
The release continued the disclosure of national secrets ordered by Donald Trump after he began his second presidency in January. It comes a month after unredacted files related to the 1963 assassination of president John F Kennedy were disclosed. The earlier documents gave curious readers more details about cold- war era covert US operations in other nations but did not initially lend credence to long-circulating conspiracy theories about who killed JFK, RFK's brother.
Robert Kennedy was fatally shot on 5 June 1968 at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, moments after giving a speech celebrating his victory in California's presidential primary. His assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, was convicted of first-degree murder and is serving life in prison.
The files included pictures of handwritten notes by Sirhan.
'RFK must be disposed of like his brother was,' read the writing on the outside of an empty envelope with the return address from the district director of the Internal Revenue Service in Los Angeles.
Sirhan also filled a page of a Pasadena City College notebook with variations of 'RFK must die' and 'RFK must be killed.' In a note dated 18 May 1968, he wrote: 'My determination to eliminate RFK is becoming more of an unshakable obsession.'
In another of the newly released documents, the assassin said he advocated for 'the overthrow of the current president'. The Democrat Lyndon Johnson was in the White House at the time of RFK's death.
'I have no absolute plans yet, but soon will compose them,' wrote Sirhan, who pledged support for communist Russia and China.
The newly released files also included notes from interviews with people who knew Sirhan from a wide variety of contexts, such as classmates, neighbors and coworkers. While some described him as 'a friendly, kind and generous person', others depicted a brooding and 'impressionable' young man who felt strongly about his political convictions and briefly believed in mysticism.
According to the files, Sirhan told his garbage collector that he planned to kill Kennedy shortly after Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated on 4 April 1968. The co-worker, a Black man, said he planned to vote for Kennedy because he would help Black people.
'Well, I don't agree,' Sirhan replied, the man told investigators. 'I am planning on shooting the son of a bitch'.
FBI documents describe interviews with a group of tourists who had heard rumors about Kennedy being shot weeks before his death. Several people who visited Israel in May 1968 said a tour guide told them Kennedy had been shot. One person said he heard that an attempt on Kennedy's life had been made in Milwaukee. Another heard that he was shot in Nebraska.
The National Archives and Records Administration posted 229 files containing the pages to its public website. Many files related to the assassination had been previously released – but others had not been digitized and sat for decades in federal government storage facilities.
Trump, a Republican, has championed in the name of transparency the release of documents related to high-profile assassinations and investigations. But he's also been deeply suspicious for years of the government's intelligence agencies. His administration's release of once-hidden files opens the door for additional public scrutiny and questions about the operations and conclusions of institutions such as the CIA and the FBI.
Trump signed an executive order in January calling for the release of government documents related to the assassinations of Robert F Kennedy and King after their killings within two months of each other.
Lawyers for Kennedy's killer have said for decades that he is unlikely to reoffend or pose a danger to society. And in 2021, a parole board deemed Sirhan suitable for release. But California governor Gavin Newson rejected the decision in 2022, keeping him in state prison. In 2023 , a different panel denied him release, saying he still lacks insight into what caused him to shoot Kennedy.
The late senator's son Robert F Kennedy Jr, who now serves as Trump's health and human services secretary, commended the president and his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, for what he called their 'courage' and 'dogged efforts' to release the files.
'Lifting the veil on the RFK papers is a necessary step toward restoring trust in American government,' Kennedy Jr said in a statement.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The National
13 hours ago
- The National
Immigration debate has been mishandled by both the left and the right
The same dynamic was visible in Tommy Robinson's recent appearance on the Triggernometry YouTube show, which reached millions online. The reaction was telling. Black men from Birmingham and London, once hostile, said they now support him. Ex-Muslims from Iran, Tunisia, and Algeria wrote that he speaks uncomfortable truths about Islam. LGBT people, pensioners, Hindus, even Canadians and Americans described him as a hero. Whether one agrees with him or not, it shows how far his message has moved into the mainstream. Ignoring that shift or writing it off as pure racism only drives more people into his corner. READ MORE: Falkirk protests face-off outside hotel housing asylum seekers The problem is that both left and right have mishandled this debate. The left is right to defend refugees and to insist that scapegoating them is wrong. But it has often treated every concern as racism, which shuts down legitimate discussion in communities that feel ignored. The right is right that immigration has been mishandled and that grooming gangs were ignored for too long. But it collapses crime and immigration into the same category, directing rage at refugees rather than at governments that failed to act. We need honesty. If someone is in Britain under asylum and commits a serious crime such as rape or grooming, the contract with the state is broken. They should be deported without delay. That is not racism – it is the only way to uphold trust in the system. At the same time, refugees fleeing persecution cannot be treated as criminals by default. Their stories show why they need protection. READ MORE: Police probe 'racist' banner outside Scottish asylum seeker hotel Take Bella, a transgender teacher from Afghanistan. When the Taliban returned in 2021, she knew discovery meant death – by stoning, by fire, or by being thrown from a building. Along with around 30 others, she was evacuated in a secret UK mission for LGBT Afghans. She arrived in Britain with one spare set of clothes and a false medical story as cover. Now she lives in Brighton: safe, free, but lonely, still struggling with the scars of fear. Others on her flight, like Ahmed, a gay youth worker, describe it bluntly: escaping was 'the only chance to stay alive.' These are the human realities hidden when asylum is reduced to slogans. And yet, we cannot ignore another reality. Earlier this year, when I went to a gay club in Manchester's Village, a car slowed down outside, its windows rolled down, and four young Muslim men shouted abuse at us as we queued to get in. In what is supposed to be our own safe space. My community has fought for 50 years to win visibility, safety, and dignity. When abuse like that goes unanswered, it breeds fear – and that fear is why some LGBT people now drift toward the far right. In the Netherlands, it was gay men and women, once a persecuted minority, who became a decisive bloc of support for Geert Wilders's anti-immigration party. They did not switch because they suddenly became racist, but because they felt their values – equality, freedom, the right to live openly – were under threat and dismissed by the mainstream. READ MORE: One man, 26, arrested at Falkirk asylum seeker hotel protests That is what this all comes back to: values. Not Muslim or Christian, not immigrant or native, but human values. Equality, dignity, respect. Many British Muslims live by those values – comedians like Guz Khan, Mawaan Rizwan, or Omid Djalili come from Muslim backgrounds and represent integration at its best. But others bring with them patriarchal and violent ideas imported from Afghanistan, Pakistan, or elsewhere: that women should obey, that daughters can be controlled, that religion overrides freedom. Those attitudes clash with the rights we have built here, and pretending otherwise helps no-one. If Scotland wants to do better, we must confront this honestly. We must defend refugees like Bella who flee for their lives. We must be unflinching in punishing those who abuse our trust, including deportation when crimes are committed. And we must insist that anyone who comes here, of any faith or background, lives by the same fundamental values of equality and freedom. If our politics refuses to do this, the far right will step into the vacuum, just as it already has elsewhere in Europe. Falkirk may look like a local flashpoint, but it is a warning of what happens when the shouting drowns out the truth. If we cannot find balance, we will lose control of the debate altogether. James Murphy Bute I WONDER if anyone from the Scottish Government and/or the SNP leadership could please explain why they are very reluctant to implement the Supreme Court's decision on gender rules for schools and prisons while happily and rather meekly accepting the very same court's decision that we cannot hold an independence referendum. Asking for a friend. Iain Wilson Stirling
Daily Mirror
15 hours ago
- Daily Mirror
DARREN LEWIS: 'It's up to each of us to challenge hate from thugs and racists'
Our society is poisoned by the narrative that the UK is under threat from Black and Brown men. The systematic bid to deem anyone non-white as someone to fear is at critical mass, writes Darren Lewis We warned about it. Now it's happening. Pockets of hate from thugs and racists, fed on lies and hungry to choose violence. I saw some distressing examples on social media last week: a Black man grabbed by the neck by a middle-aged white guy and punched – with his assailant demanding to know his address and telling him to '**** off'. And the viral clip that appeared to show a racially aggravated assault on two elderly Sikh men outside Wolverhampton railway station. Three teenagers have been arrested. And the man attacked and racially abused by two men at a Metro Station in North Shields in broad daylight. hurling insults at Black Bournemouth player Antoine Semenyo. Arrests have been made, but these kind of attacks continue across the country. Many highlight the spike in the number of Muslims and migrants harassed and assaulted in public across England since last summer's riots and the explosion of hate and xenophobia. The attackers don't even care about being filmed with phone cameras these days. They are fuelled by the rhetoric of the usual suspects spreading fear and division on social media. You will have heard it from the politicians indulged by print, TV and radio platforms who care less for the safety of ordinary people than they do for the engagement that anger and controversy generates. It is getting worse. Last week, Good Morning Britain newsreader Marverine Cole reiterated a truth we've known for some time now. Our society is poisoned by the narrative that the UK is under threat from Black and Brown men. The systematic bid to deem anyone non-white as someone to fear is at critical mass. It has never really gone away. Enoch Powell, the National Front and others pushed it in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s. In the past 15 years or so it has been UKIP, then the Tories and Reform in a race to the bottom, with Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer even pandering to the online right. Now, powered by Big Tech, it is rampant. When it triggered an indiscriminate targeting of Black and Brown people on the UK's streets last summer, sections of our mainstream media threw their hands in the air in faux outrage, asking: 'How could this happen?' Now some of those same platforms are producing rage bait for those who either don't have time or the inclination to read the details. The attacks you've read about here are so often the result. And the tip of the iceberg. Sections of social – and mainstream – media are dripping with the hate that will get someone killed. And if that happens, not a single one of them will be able to wash the blood off their hands. The standard of our politicians, on all sides, is so poor there are few principled enough to lead us through this nightmare. So it's on us to push back. To support those producing the stats to expose, for example, the lie that London has fallen. Crime has been proven to have fallen there. More of us need to debunk the liars and fantasists skewing statistics and throwing around words like 'per capita' to claim men arriving on small boats are more likely to commit crime compared to the rest of us. More of us need to point out the lack of focus on paedophiles like Gordon Hamilton, Stuart Compton and Michael Bolderston, all white, all sentenced in the past few weeks. As a father of two girls, protecting them from animals from any demographic has, and will always be, a priority. We now have to protect each other from those who wish to divide us.
BBC News
15 hours ago
- BBC News
DR Congo: M23 rebels suspend peace talks with government
The main rebel group in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the M23, has walked away from peace talks with the government, saying it will not return unless the authorities adhere to a previous ceasefire between the two sides escalated in January, when the M23 captured large parts of the mineral-rich east, including the regional capital Qatar last month, the rebels and the government signed a ceasefire agreement, intended as a step towards a permanent peace on Monday, as negotiations were set to resume, the M23 said its representatives were not present in Qatar. M23 spokesperson Lawrence Kanyuka told the BBC's Great Lakes service that the Congolese government "doesn't want peace".How Trump wants the US to cash in on mineral-rich DR Congo's peace dealWhat's the fighting in DR Congo all about?He accused the authorities of not respecting the provisions contained in the ceasefire deal, but DR Congo's military denies this alleged that government forces had continued to attack rebel positions, despite the agreement stating that both sides must refrain from the Congolese armed forces accused the M23 of launching attacks almost daily in the North Kivu and South Kivu Qatar peace deal was supposed to be signed by Sunday, an unnamed official from Qatar told the AFP news agency that a draft agreement had been shared with DR Congo and the agreement runs alongside a peace deal between DR Congo and Rwanda, which was brokered by the US in Congo, the UN and numerous Western powers have accused Rwanda of backing the M23. Despite participating in the Washington peace talks, Rwanda has long denied the allegations against Washington peace deal, hailed by President Donald Trump as a "glorious triumph", could grant the US access to DR Congo's vast mineral it is the latest in a long line of failed peace deals in the the ongoing conflict, thousands of people have been killed and hundreds of thousands of civilians forced from their homes, the UN says. More stories from DR Congo: Listen: Why DR Congo is sponsoring FC Barcelona The would-be saint murdered 'mafia-style' for refusing bribesInside the Congolese mine vital to mobile phones, as rebels give BBC rare access Go to for more news from the African us on Twitter @BBCAfrica, on Facebook at BBC Africa or on Instagram at bbcafrica
