RFK Assassination Documents Released
Gabbard and RFK Jr. release 10,000 pages of material on 1968 slaying with another 50,000 pages to come
On April 18, documents relating to the June 4, 1968 assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles were made available on the National Archives web site.
The release was announced in a joint statement from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of the murdered senator and candidate for president in 1968.
The release of 229 files comprising 10,185 pages is the “first tranche of RFK files, that were previously sitting in storage at The National Archives,” according to the statement. And another 50,000 pages of RFK assassination files were found in searches of FBI and CIA warehouses. These documents had not previously been turned over to the National Archives, but are now being processed for posting. According to the statement, the agencies: “will continue to search government facilities for additional files.”
In the announcement Gabbard said:
“Nearly 60 years after the tragic assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, the American people will, for the first time, have the opportunity to review the federal government’s investigation thanks to the leadership of President Trump. My team is honored that the President entrusted us to lead the declassification efforts and to shine a long-overdue light on the truth. I extend my deepest thanks for Bobby Kennedy and his families’ support.”
RFK Jr. added:
“Lifting the veil on the RFK papers is a necessary step toward restoring trust in American government. “I commend President Trump for his courage and his commitment to transparency. I’m grateful also to Tulsi Gabbard for her dogged efforts to root out and declassify these documents.”
Gabbard spoke to the Daily Wire about the hunt for the records and processing at NARA, and was shown documents and artifacts from the RFK and JFK collection there. Watch the video here.
In the video, Gabbard stated:
“People will find in the release today, there is no ‘smoking gun,’ but there are a lot of things that have not been previously known that really call into question what really happened — and who was behind it, which includes conversations that were happening in other countries, and messages that were going around about the assassination itself.”
Shown one of the cables released today, Gabbard said:
“If you look on this memo alone, you see Kuwait, London, Tel Aviv, Beirut, Benghazi…all of these American embassies who were the recipients of this cable… People are going to have to go to the website and read for themselves to kind of get an insight into what the conversations were like before, and after, Senator Kennedy’s assassination.”
NARA’s Executive for Research Services Chris Naylor took Gabbard on a tour on Thursday afternoon and showed some of the archives held there, including the shirt Lee Harvey Oswald was wearing when he was killed while in custody of the Dallas police.
In the current release, there were 180 documents from the FBI and 49 documents from the Department of State. JFK Facts will read and report back to you here.
I was working with a young photographer at the time of RFK's assassination. Scott Enyart was in high school, only 15 years of age. He was in the kitchen at the time of the shots, taking photos from up on a table above the crowd. There is a famous photo of him standing on the table taking a picture. As he was leaving the Ambassador Hotel that night, the police stopped him and forced him to give up the film he shot. They promised to return the entire rolls of film once they were processed. Long story short, Scott had to sue the LAPD years later in order to get the film returned. He won a settlement of $250,000 but never received all of the film. He knows he got some shots as the bullets were ringing out that night. But they were never seen. There is also the testimony of Thomas Noguchi, the famous Los Angeles coroner at the time, who explained in his autopsy finding that RFK had been killed by a close range shot (within 6"-12") by a rear shot behind his right ear. Funny how the press never covered the RFK assassination discrepancies, just like his brother JFK. Nothing to see here. If you haven't seen it, John Barbour's documentary called, "The American Media & The 2nd Assassination of JFK", gets to the heart of the matter as to why the American public has never gotten the truth regarding the cold blooded killing of two brothers who wanted to bring peace to our country. That's the cold reality some of us have realized since the 1960's.
RFK had an honest, competent autopsy unlike JFK. The lethal shot was behind an ear. Sirhan faced him.