CIA releases declassified documents on Robert F Kennedy assassination
CIA Director John Ratcliffe released the documents in response to an executive order signed by President Donald Trump to declassify files on the assassinations of former President John F. Kennedy, civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. and RFK.
According to the CIA, the latest batch of documents complements the thousands of pages the agency provided to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) as part of their public releases related to JFK earlier this year.
The most recent release shows for the first time that RFK, as a senator, shared his experiences traveling to the former Soviet Union with the CIA while reflecting his patriotic commitment to serving his country.
"Today's release delivers on President Trump's commitment to maximum transparency, enabling the CIA to shine light on information that serves the public interest," Ratcliffe said. "I am proud to share our work on this incredibly important topic with the American people."
Along with sharing information about RFK's Soviet Union experiences, the files also dive into the psychological assessments of Sirhan Sirhan, the man who shot and killed RFK in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968.
In a personality assessment memo on July 8, 1968, federal authorities declared that "under no circumstances would we have predicted that [Sirhan] was 'capable' of doing what he did."
In the same memo, the feds said the odds of Sirhan being successful were "tremendous."
"Obviously, we cannot see him as part of a conspiracy," the memo read. "He could be a tool of a conspiracy in the sense that the attempted assassin of Secretary of State [William] Seward and the assigned assassin of Vice President Andrew Johnson [George Atzerodt] were tools of the [John Wilkes] Booth conspiracy. It is very likely, however, that he could have effectively acted under precise instructions."
It goes on to say that most people of the type of attack Sirhan was accused of at the time attack their mother or their girlfriend.
"Occasionally they will lash out against an employer or colleagues (a case in point is the recent Pennsylvania case of the 'quiet' man who killed his car pool and then himself)," the memo read. "Sometimes they will pick public figures and make abortive attempts to get at them. Essentially, we see Sirhan as being more like the impulsive assassins of [former presidents James] Garfield and [William] McKinley than the calculating assassins of [Abraham] Lincoln and President Kennedy."
The file release is what the CIA said was a collaborative effort directed by Trump and led by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard with coordination from the CIA, Department of Justice, FBI and NARA.
"Today's release is another important step in fulfilling President Trump's commitment to maximum transparency. Thank you to those at the CIA, ODNI, and NARA who worked hard to locate, review, and digitize these documents, many of which have never been released publicly before," Gabbard said. "We will continue coordinating with our partners across the Intelligence Community to fulfill President Trump's promise of maximum transparency."
The documents are available to the public and can be viewed by visiting cia.gov and archives.gov/rfk.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was a guest on Fox News' "The Story" on Thursday and told host Martha MacCallum that he did not know his father was reporting back to the CIA during his trip to the Soviet Union in 1955, when he was a Senate aide.
"My mother was on that trip," RFK Jr. said. "She joined him in St. Petersburg, and she actually was working for the CIA at that time, and she was wearing a carnation in her lapel that was attached to a little bubble where she could take pictures."
RFK Jr. continued by saying the Soviets had brought artwork back to now-St. Petersburg after the defeat of Nazi Germany. The Germans, he explained, had confiscated the artwork from some of the Jewish families and that the CIA was interested in that.
"I don't think it was anything of grave national security interest, but it was, you know, it's an interesting fact that I didn't know about my dad," he said.
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