The federal government released more than 60,000 pages of records on Sen. Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination late Wednesday, the second batch of documents to be released on the 1968 assassination.
President Trump ordered the releases in January, with support from the senator’s son, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has long claimed that his father’s convicted killer, Sirhan Sirhan, may be innocent.
According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the documents “have been sitting in various storage facilities across the federal government for decades and had never been digitized or accessible to the public before.” The ODNI, led by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, digitized the documents and posted them on the National Archives website.
“Today’s release is an important step towards maximum transparency, finding the truth, and sharing the truth,” Gabbard wrote on Truth Social.
Mr. Trump has also ordered the release of documents related to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. Some John F. Kennedy files were released in March, but King’s documents have yet to be released.
What’s in the RFK files — and will we learn anything new?
The ODNI claimed that the documents posted Wednesday contain “never-before-seen details about the FBI’s investigation into the assassination of RFK — including the discussion of potential leads by various FBI offices, internal FBI memos detailing the progress of the case, and more.”
The records also include recordings of Los Angeles police interviews with Sirhan and eyewitnesses to the 1968 assassination, according to the ODNI.
However, it is unclear whether the files will provide new information about Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination.
Authorities in Los Angeles conducted the primary investigation and prosecution of the senator’s 1968 assassination. Since the late 1980s, documents from the local investigation, as well as many records from a separate FBI probe, have been made available to the public in California’s state archives.
The ODNI stated that some of the records published on Wednesday had previously been turned over to the Los Angeles Police Department.
What did last month’s RFK files say?
Last month, the government released 10,000 records on Robert F. Kennedy. According to a CBS News review, the documents included Sirhan’s handwritten notes, including one in which he wrote “RFK must be disposed of like his brother was,” as well as FBI memos on Sirhan, crime scene and autopsy photos, witness interviews, and other materials.
Several of these records mention common conspiracy theories about the assassination, such as witnesses seeing a woman in a polka-dot dress or someone shouting “we shot him.” Other witnesses stated that they did not see anyone matching that description.
Many of the information in those files was already public knowledge.
Who killed RFK — and what has RFK Jr. said?
Sirhan was convicted of killing Robert F. Kennedy, a Democratic presidential primary candidate, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
He was arrested shortly after the shooting, when he was 24 years old. Sirhan has admitted to killing the senator at various points, claiming that it was because of the senator’s support for Israel, but he has also claimed innocence or that he cannot recall the incident.
Sirhan has been incarcerated in California for decades, and multiple parole requests have been denied. The state parole board approved his bid for parole in 2021, but Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of California denied the request.
For decades, the case has piqued the public’s interest, with some claiming Sirhan did not fire the fatal shots or was part of a larger conspiracy. They frequently cite conflicting eyewitness accounts or the alleged presence of extra bullets, despite the fact that many others have supported Sirhan’s claim that he acted alone.
One of the skeptics is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was 14 years old when his father was assassinated. He has argued that Sirhan was not responsible for the killing and met with him in prison before supporting his 2021 parole request.
Other Kennedy family members, however, have been staunchly opposed to Sirhan’s release from prison.