Washington (AP) – About 10,000 pages of files related to 1968 Assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy were released on Friday, including handwritten notes by the shooter, who said that the Democratic presidential candidate “was to be eliminated” and recognized an obsession to kill him.
Many files had been made public before, while others had not been scanned and had been seated for decades in storage facilities for the federal government. Their release continued the Disclosure of historical inquiry documents Ordered by President Donald Trump.
Kennedy was shot dead on June 5, 1968 at the Los Angeles Ambassador hotel for a few moments after spending a speech celebrating his victory in the presidential primary of California. His assassin, Sirhan Sirhanwas found guilty of first degree murder and purge for life.
Sirhan Sirhan, on the right, accused of having murdered Senator Robert F. Kennedy, is seen with his lawyer Russell E. Parsons in Los Angeles in June 1968. (Photo AP, file)
The files included photos of handwritten notes from Sirhan.
“RFK must be eliminated as his brother,” read the writing outside an empty envelope, referring to the older brother of Kennedy, President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963. The return address came from the district director of the internal returned service to Los Angeles.
The National Archives and Records Administration published 229 files containing the pages on its public website.
The press release comes a month after the unresaled files linked to The assassination of President Kennedy have been disclosed. These documents gave curious readers more details on Secret operations of the era of the Cold War In other countries, but has not given credibility to conspiracy theories in long -term circulation on which JFK killed.
Secretary of Health and Social Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.Robert Kennedy’s son congratulated the Liberation.
“The lifting of the veil on RFK documents is a necessary step to restore confidence in the US government,” the secretary of health said in a statement.
Senator Robert F. Kennedy, D-NY, told journalists, and to the nation that he was a candidate for the presidential appointment of his party on March 16, 1968 in Washington. (AP photo, file)
Documents include interviews with the knowledge of Assassin
The files surrounding the assassination of Robert Kennedy also included notes of interviews with people who knew Sirhan in a wide variety of contexts, such as classmates, neighbors and colleagues. While some have described him as “a friendly, kind and generous person”, others represented a young man brooding and “impressionable” who felt firmly about his political convictions and briefly believed in mysticism.
According to the files, Sirhan told his waste collector that he had planned to kill Kennedy shortly after the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. The sanitation worker, a black man, said that he was planning to vote for Kennedy because he would help the blacks.
“Well, I do not agree. I plan to shoot the son of a dog,” Sirhan replied, the man told investigators.
Larry Sabato, director of the Politics Center of the University of Virginia and author of “The Kennedy Half Century”, said that there had always been plots surrounding the assassination of Robert Kennedy. He thinks that the deployment of documents on Friday would be similar to JFK documents published earlier this year.
He warned that an opinion must be made with care and slowly, “just in case there is an index in there where there is an anecdote” which could shed light on the assassination.
“I hope there is more information,” said Sabato. “I doubt there is, just as I said when the JFK documents were released.”
Certain editors remained in the documents published online on Friday, including the names and dates of birth. Last month, the Trump administration was critical on unwaped personal informationIncluding the social security numbers, when the files surrounded by President John F. Kennedy.
Trump, a Republican, defended the release of downwards related to assassinations and high -level surveys on behalf of transparency. But it has also been deeply suspicious for years for government intelligence agencies. The release by its formerly hidden file administration opens the door to a more public examination of the operations and conclusions of institutions such as the CIA and the FBI.
President Donald Trump holds a signed decree aimed at declassifying the remaining federal registers relating to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., in the White House oval office on January 23, 2025 in Washington. (AP photo / ben Curtis, file)
Sirhan Sirhan reacts during a parole audience on February 10, 2016 at the correctional establishment of Richard J. Donovan in San Diego. (AP photo / Gregory Bull, Pool, File)
Asset signed a decree In January, calling for the release of government documents linked to the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and King, who were killed less than two months old.
Kennedy’s lawyers’ lawyers said for decades that he is unlikely to reoffend or pose a danger to the company, and in 2021, a parole commission deemed Sirhan adapted to the Liberation. But Gov. Gavin Newsom rejected the decision in 2022Keep it in state prison. In 2023 A different panel I refused him a release, saying that he was still lacking in an overview of what led him to shoot Kennedy.
RFK is still a hero of American liberals
Kennedy remains an icon for the liberals, who consider him a champion of human rights who was also determined to fight against poverty and racial and economic injustice. They often consider his assassination as the last in a series of major tragedies that put the United States and its policy on a darker and more conservative path.
He was a sometimes conflictual silhouette during his lifetime. Some criticisms thought that he had arrived late to oppose the Vietnam War, and he launched his campaign for the president in 1968 that after the Democratic primary in New Hampshire exposed the political weakness of President Johnson.
Kennedy’s older brother appointed him an American attorney general, and he remained a close assistant to JFK’s assassination in Dallas. In 1964, he won a seat in the American Senate in New York and was considered the heir to the political heritage of the family.
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Funk has brought back to Omaha, Nebraska. The writers of the Associated Press Holly Ramer in Concord, New Hampshire, Eric Tucker in Washington, Juan Lozano in Houston, John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, Safiyah Riddle in Montgomery, Alabama, Corey Williams in Detroit and Haya Panjwani in Washington contributed to this report.
