About 10,000 pages of records related to the 1968 assassination of Robert F Kennedy, including handwritten notes by the assassin, who said the US senator and Democratic presidential candidate “must be disposed of” and acknowledged an obsession with killing him.
The release continued the disclosure of national secrets ordered by Donald Trump after he began his second presidency in January. It comes a month after unredacted files related to the 1963 assassination of president John F Kennedy were disclosed. The earlier documents gave curious readers more details about cold- war era covert US operations in other nations but did not initially lend credence to long-circulating conspiracy theories about who killed JFK, RFK’s brother.
Robert Kennedy was fatally shot on 5 June 1968 at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, moments after giving a speech celebrating his victory in California’s presidential primary. His assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, was convicted of first-degree murder and is serving life in prison.
The files included pictures of handwritten notes by Sirhan.
“RFK must be disposed of like his brother was,” read the writing on the outside of an empty envelope with the return address from the district director of the Internal Revenue Service in Los Angeles.
Sirhan also filled a page of a Pasadena City College notebook with variations of “RFK must die” and “RFK must be killed.” In a note dated 18 May 1968, he wrote: “My determination to eliminate RFK is becoming more of an unshakable obsession.”
In another of the newly released documents, the assassin said he advocated for “the overthrow of the current president”. The Democrat Lyndon Johnson was in the White House at the time of RFK’s death.
“I have no absolute plans yet, but soon will compose them,” wrote Sirhan, who pledged support for communist Russia and China.
The newly released files also included notes from interviews with people who knew Sirhan from a wide variety of contexts, such as classmates, neighbors and coworkers. While some described him as “a friendly, kind and generous person”, others depicted a brooding and “impressionable” young man who felt strongly about his political convictions and briefly believed in mysticism.
According to the files, Sirhan told his garbage collector that he planned to kill Kennedy shortly after Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated on 4 April 1968. The co-worker, a Black man, said he planned to vote for Kennedy because he would help Black people.
“Well, I don’t agree,” Sirhan replied, the man told investigators. “I am planning on shooting the son of a bitch”.
FBI documents describe interviews with a group of tourists who had heard rumors about Kennedy being shot weeks before his death. Several people who visited Israel in May 1968 said a tour guide told them Kennedy had been shot. One person said he heard that an attempt on Kennedy’s life had been made in Milwaukee. Another heard that he was shot in Nebraska.
The National Archives and Records Administration posted 229 files containing the pages to its public website. Many files related to the assassination had been previously released – but others had not been digitized and sat for decades in federal government storage facilities.
Trump, a Republican, has championed in the name of transparency the release of documents related to high-profile assassinations and investigations. But he’s also been deeply suspicious for years of the government’s intelligence agencies. His administration’s release of once-hidden files opens the door for additional public scrutiny and questions about the operations and conclusions of institutions such as the CIA and the FBI.
Trump signed an executive order in January calling for the release of government documents related to the assassinations of Robert F Kennedy and King after their killings within two months of each other.
Lawyers for Kennedy’s killer have said for decades that he is unlikely to reoffend or pose a danger to society. And in 2021, a parole board deemed Sirhan suitable for release. But California governor Gavin Newson rejected the decision in 2022, keeping him in state prison. In 2023 , a different panel denied him release, saying he still lacks insight into what caused him to shoot Kennedy.
The late senator’s son Robert F Kennedy Jr, who now serves as Trump’s health and human services secretary, commended the president and his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, for what he called their “courage” and “dogged efforts” to release the files.
“Lifting the veil on the RFK papers is a necessary step toward restoring trust in American government,” Kennedy Jr said in a statement.
