More than 230, 000 pages of once-classified files relating to Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK)’s murder have been made available by the White House almost six decades after his death in 1968.
After becoming president in January, Donald Trump signed an executive order declassifying documents related to the assassinations of King, former President John F Kennedy and former Senator Robert F Kennedy.
The MLK files, in large part, support the long-held myth that the assassin James Earl Ray acted alone and without conclusive proof of a larger conspiracy.
The FBI’s surveillance and harassment of King, including attempts to discredit and intimidate him in the years leading up to his assassination, are well documented in the files released on Monday.
So what do the MLK files offer? What actions did the FBI take against him? Why did Trump just release them now, then?
What are the MLK files?
The MLK files are a treasure trove of documents that relate to King’s assassination in 1968 and the FBI’s ongoing surveillance of him throughout the 1950s and 1960s. After the FBI compiled the documents and gave them to the National Archives and Records Administration, the records were placed under a court-imposed seal in 1977.
The files include internal memos, wiretap transcripts, informant reports and correspondence from then-FBI Director J Edgar Hoover and senior officials, reflecting how the FBI viewed King as a political threat due to his civil rights activism.
The FBI’s covert attempt to discredit and intimidate King, which included bugging his hotels, breaking into his inner circle, and even writing him an unidentified letter urging him to commit suicide in 1964, is a major focus.
King’s ties to former Communist Party member Stanley Levison were used by the FBI to support illegal surveillance and attempts to undermine his reputation, and the FBI also falsely identified him as a communist sympathiser.
These operations were part of the FBI’s wider COINTELPRO programme, which targeted activists and dissenters across the country.
Did any new information emerge from the files?
The newly released MLK files do not reveal any dramatic new evidence about his assassination or secret plots.
The FBI conducted extensive surveillance, and Ray was convicted as the lone shooter, which was widely known in the files.
The FBI may have considered additional suspects after Ray, but the communications also suggest otherwise. Ray confessed to killing King in 1969 but later recanted and claimed he was framed.
Ray had been on the run for almost two months prior to his arrest. Before being extradited to the US, where he was found guilty and given a 99-year prison sentence, he fled to Canada, Portugal, and the UK. He died in April 1998 from complications related to kidney and liver disease.
The FBI continued to monitor King and conduct extensive surveillance and disinformation campaigns under Hoover’s direction in the documents. These methods, including anonymous threats and wiretaps, have been widely known for decades, especially since the church committee’s findings in the US Senate in the 1970s.
The new files appear to confirm this history while adding more granular details. They provide additional internal memos and internal records that support earlier accounts of the bureau’s efforts to discredit King and keep his activities in perspective.
Notably, the release does not include any fresh information about the King assassination that might have been related to Ray.
But King scholars would like to see the information the FBI was discussing and circulating as part of its investigation, Ryan Jones, director of history, interpretation and curatorial services at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee told The Associated Press news agency.
According to Jones, “That’s critical given the fact that the American public at the time wasn’t aware that the FBI that was overseeing a smear campaign while he was alive,” They merely ignored the same bureau that was receiving assassination threats against King.
What is the civil rights movement?
In the 1950s and 1960s, the civil rights movement fought for decades to put an end to racial segregation and prejudice against African Americans, primarily in the US.
Following World War II, Black Americans demanded equal treatment under the law and full access to the political, social, and economic rights guaranteed by the US Constitution, which was the root of centuries of resistance to slavery and racial injustice.
Led by figures such as Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, King and countless grassroots activists, the movement employed strategies ranging from peaceful protests and legal challenges to civil disobedience and mass mobilisation.
Landmark events like the Selma-to-Montgomery marches, the Alabama bus boycott in Alabama, the March on Washington, where King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, and the Selma-to-Montgomery marches, all of which were under the control of the public. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were among the major legislative victories resulting from these efforts.
What did the FBI do during this operation?
The FBI’s counterintelligence program, known as COINTELPRO, a covert initiative launched by the FBI under Hoover, dominated the FBI’s operation against King.
Initiated in 1956, COINTELPRO targeted various organisations, but its focus on King and the broader civil rights movement intensified in the early 1960s, particularly as King’s prominence grew.
King was identified as a threat to national security by the FBI, who had a suspicion of communist influence in the civil rights movement, despite never having any proof of such a claim.
Through surveillance and psychological strategies, King’s activities are outlined in declassified documents as part of a coordinated effort to monitor his behavior, undercut his leadership, and tarnish his reputation in the public. Wiretaps were placed on King’s home and office phones, and hidden microphones were installed in hotel rooms where he stayed.
Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy authorized these efforts in 1963, but they frequently turned on themselves to get slanderous information about King’s private life, particularly his extramarital affairs.
The FBI urged King to commit suicide to avoid public outcry in 1964 by sending an anonymous letter to him along with an audiotape it allegedly obtained from a contaminated hotel room to conceal his affairs.
The FBI’s operation against King, which continued until his assassination in 1968, reflected Hoover’s animosity and the agency’s broader paranoia about civil rights activism disrupting the status quo.
In a statement from the King family, it was stated that “he was relentlessly targeted by a deeply disturbing, predatory, and disinformation and surveillance campaign.“
Why was Trump’s release date?
The Trump administration released the MLK files despite opposition from his family and the political group he once led.
Attorney General Pamela Bondi stated in a statement that “the American people deserve answers decades after one of our country’s greatest leaders was killed.”
According to Trump’s request for the files to be made public, it was “in the national interest” to release the information. “Their families and the American people deserve transparency and truth”, it said.
To mark the release of the files, Bondi hosted Alveda King, a conservative commentator and MLK’s niece, at the Department of Justice. Alveda expressed gratitude to Trump for “keeping their promise of transparency in the release of these documents on King’s assassination.”
The King family said in its statement that it had hoped to get an opportunity to review the files as a family before their public release.
King’s children described their father’s case as a “captivating public curiosity for decades,” but they also stressed that “these files must be viewed in their full historical context.
We ask those who sign up for the release of these files to show respect for our family’s ongoing grief, according to the statement.
Trump, have any other files been made public?
Trump declassified thousands of documents relating to the murders of former president John F. Kennedy (JFK) and his younger brother, Robert F. Kennedy, before making the MLK files public, citing transparency as a result.
In March, the National Archives released tens of thousands of pages concerning JFK’s 1963 assassination, including previously redacted FBI and CIA records. The intelligence efforts of US surveillance efforts during the Cold War and the assassin Lee Harvey Oswald were provided in more detail in these documents.
The Trump administration then released more than 70, 000 pages relating to Senator Kennedy’s 1968 assassination, which were released from April to June. These records included FBI field reports, informant files and internal memos.
While many praised the most recent release, other leaders criticized Trump for making the president’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files a political distraction.
Source: Aljazeera
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