Senator Robert F. Kennedy addresses a crowd at San Fernando Valley State College during 1968 presidential primary campaign. (Sven Walnum, The Sven Walnum Photograph Collection/John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston, MA/Wikimedia Commons)
President Donald Trump’s administration on Friday released more than 10,000 pages of files related to the 1968 assassination of former Senator Robert F. Kennedy, following through on an executive order aimed at declassifying documents over the killings of high-profile Americans.
Kennedy’s son, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is Trump’s health secretary, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said in a statement that files that had been in storage at the National Archives had been manually scanned and uploaded at archives.gov/rfk.
The files are being published with “minimal redactions for privacy reasons - including redactions for Social Security Numbers and Tax Identification Numbers,” they said.
“Lifting the veil on the RFK papers is a necessary step toward restoring trust in American government,” Kennedy’s statement said. “I commend President Trump for his courage and his commitment to transparency.”
Gabbard said that the search for documents had turned up an additional 50,000 pages that were still being prepared for public release. Those files are also being prepared for public release Gabbard said, adding that officials will continue to search for other documents the government may have.
Trump has sought to deliver on promises to identify and release files pertaining to the deaths of the late Senator Kennedy; his brother, former President John F. Kennedy; and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. who were slain during the 1960s. In March, the administration released approximately 80,000 pages of files related to the former president’s killing that they said were previously classified.
Trump had vowed to release the documents during his first term in office, but relented to requests from the intelligence community to keep much of the material classified. The president reiterated his pledge during the 2024 campaign, telling a podcast last year that he had wanted to make the files public and suggesting that it was the Central Intelligence Agency that delayed their release.
In January after retaking office, he signed an order to declassify documents on the two Kennedy brothers and King.Robert F. Kennedy Sr. was a US senator from New York and a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968 when he was shot and killed in Los Angeles. His son, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has publicly called for Sirhan Sirhan, the man convicted of the killing, to be released on parole, a stance he has taken that is at odds with many of his siblings.
In a 2021 op-ed, the younger Kennedy urged California Governor Gavin Newsom to free Sirhan and questioned whether he was in fact his father’s killer. Newsom ultimately denied Sirhan parole.
