(Ken Silva, Headline USA) In a historically significant move that Americans have sought for decades, President Donald Trump has ordered the declassification of the remaining government files about the assassinations of former President John F. Kennedy, his brother and former attorney general Robert F. Kennedy, and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
“The Federal Government has not released to the public all of its records related to those events. Their families and the American people deserve transparency and truth,” Trump said in his Thursday executive order. “It is in the national interest to finally release all records related to these assassinations without delay.”
President @realDonaldTrump signs an Executive Order to declassify the JFK, RFK, and MLK Jr. files! pic.twitter.com/BHHdjMLrl0
— Margo Martin (@MargoMartin47) January 23, 2025
Trump’s EO added that releasing the records is “long overdue.” He initially promised to declassify the JFK records during his first term, but later said that his then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo convinced him to keep them secret—which might be part of the reason why Trump just stripped Pompeo of his security clearance.
Within 15 days, the Attorney General and Director of National Intelligence shall coordinate with the White house to present a plan to the President for the full and complete release of the JFK records. The AG and DNI must do the same with the RFK and MLK records within 45 days.
Congress has yet to approve Trump’s nominees for AG and DNI, which are Pam Bondi and Tulsi Gabbard, respectively.
The CIA has long been suspected of having a role in JFK and RFK’s assassinations for numerous reasons, including that they wanted to end the agency. Then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson resurfaced that theory in December 2023, when he reported that the CIA was involved in the Kennedy assassination—citing an unnamed source with access to records that are still classified.
“We spoke to someone with access to the still-hidden CIA documents. The person was deeply familiar with what they contain. We asked this person directly: Did the CIA have a hand in the murder of John F. Kennedy, an American President?” Carlson said on Dec. 15, 2022.
Carlson didn’t cover RFK, but researchers have made the case that his shooter, Sirhan Sirhan, was a victim of MKUltra-like mind control. They also point to forensic evidence that RFK was shot from behind by someone else.
In a lengthy affidavit filed with Sirhan’s appeal in 2011, hypnotist Daniel P. Brown said, “Mr. Sirhan did not act under his own volition and knowledge at the time of the assassination and is not responsible for actions coerced and/or carried out by others,” according to the Washington Post.
As for King, the congressional Church Committee’s investigation revealed in the 1970s that the FBI harassed and blackmailed the civil rights leader a decade before.
The Church Committee discovered that the FBI used its surveillance footage of King to blackmail him. Bill Sullivan, who was the FBI’s chief of intelligence, sent the sex tapes along with a “poison pen” letter to King’s family in November 1964, urging him to commit suicide.
“King, look into your heart. You know you are a complete fraud … Lend your sexually psychotic ear to the enclosure. You will find yourself and in all your dirt, filth, evil and moronic talk exposed on the record for all time,” the leader read. “There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal, fraudulent self is bared to the nation.”
King was assassinated on April 4, 1968. Three decades later, King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, and the couple’s children won a wrongful death lawsuit against Loyd Jowers and “other unknown co-conspirators,” including government agencies.
“The jury in Memphis declared Mr. Jowers liable in Dr. King’s death for having purportedly hired a now-dead Memphis police officer, as part of a vast conspiracy, to kill Dr. King,” the New York Times reported in 1999. “It also found that unnamed others, including government agencies, had been involved, in effect accepting the plaintiffs’ contention that James Earl Ray was innocent, despite his guilty plea.”
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
