Around 10.000 pages of documents related to the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 were published yesterday as part of the ongoing process of disclosing state secrets by order of the President of the United States (U.S.), Donald Trump.
Senator Kennedy was fatally wounded on June 5th, 1968, at the “Ambassador” hotel in Los Angeles, shortly after giving a speech following his victory in the Democratic primaries in California.
His killer, Sirhan Sirhan, was convicted of first-degree murder and is serving a life sentence.
The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration published 229 files containing the mentioned pages on its official website.
Many documents related to the assassination had already been available to the public, but some remained undigitized and stored for decades in warehouses under federal government control.
“Nearly 60 years after the tragic assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, the American people now have the opportunity for the first time to review the federal government’s investigation, thanks to the leadership of President Trump,” stated the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard.
She added that the publication of the documents “finally sheds light on a long-hidden truth.”
The release of the documents about Kennedy’s murder comes a month after unredacted files were disclosed regarding the 1963 assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy.
Those documents provided interested parties with more details about U.S. covert operations in other countries during the Cold War, but did not confirm the widely spread conspiracy theories about who killed JFK.
Trump has for years advocated for transparency through the publication of documents related to well-known assassinations and investigations.
At the same time, he has long expressed suspicion toward U.S.intelligence agencies, and the release of previously classified documents from his administration opens the space for additional public scrutiny and re-examination of the conclusions and activities of institutions such as the CIA and FBI.
In January, Trump signed an executive order mandating the release of government documents related to the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., who were killed just two months apart.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., son of the Democratic senator from New York and current U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, praised Trump and Gabbard for their “courage” and “persistent fight” to make the documents public.
