Washington:
Approximately 10,000 pages with records with regard to the murder of 1968 of Sen Robert F Kennedy were released on Friday, including handwritten notes from the shooter, who said that the democratic presidential candidate “should be thrown away” and recognized an obsession with the killing of him.
Many of the files were previously made public, while others had not been digitized and for decades were in storage facilities of the federal government. Their release continued the disclosure of historical research documents ordered by President Donald Trump.
Kennedy was deadly shot on 5 June 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles just after holding a speech in honor of his victory in the presidential primary of California. His murderer, Sirhan Sirhan, was convicted of murder in the first degree and serves in prison.
The files contain images of handwritten notes from Sirhan.
“RFK must be thrown away as his brother was,” read writing on the outside of an empty envelope, referring to the older brother of Kennedy, President John F. Kennedy, who was murdered in 1963. The return address was from the district director of the Internal Revenue Service in Los Angeles.
The National Archives and Records Administration has posted 229 files with the pages on its public website.
The release comes a month after non -returned files with regard to the murder of President Kennedy were announced. Those documents gave curious readers more details about hidden operations from the Cold War in other countries, but initially did not borrow credibility of long -circulating conspiracy theories about those who killed JFK.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy JR, the son of Robert Kennedy, praised the release.
“Lifting the veil on the RFK newspapers is a necessary step in the direction of restoring confidence in the US government,” said the health secretary in a statement.
Documents contain interviews with Assassin’s acquaintances
The files around the murder of Robert Kennedy also contain notes of interviews with people who knew Sirhan from a wide range of contexts, such as classmates, neighbors and colleagues. While some described him as “a friendly, friendly and generous person,” others appointed a sultry and “influenceable” young man who strongly thought about his political beliefs and briefly believed in mysticism.
According to the files, Sirhan told his waste collector that he was planning to kill Kennedy shortly after the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. On April 4, 1968 was killed. The sanitation employee, a black man, said he was planning to vote for Kennedy because he would help black people.
“Well, I don’t agree. I intend to shoot the bastard,” Sirhan replied, the man told the researchers.
Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and author of “The Kennedy Half-Century”, said there have always been conspiracies around the murder of Robert Kennedy. He believes that the rollout of documents would be comparable on Friday to the JFK documents released earlier this year.
He warned that an assessment should be done carefully and slowly, “in case there is a hint or there is an anecdote” that could shed more light on the murder.
“I hope there is more information,” said Sabato. “I doubt that I am there, just as I said when the JFK documents were released.”
Some editors remained in the documents that were placed online on Friday, including names and birth dates. Last month the Trump administration was criticized for non -edited personal information, including SOFI numbers, during the release of records around the murder of John F. Kennedy.
Trump, a Republican, has defended the release of documents with regard to controversial murders and investigations in the name of transparency. But he has also been deeply suspicious of the government’s intelligence services for years. The release of his administration of once hidden files opens the door for more public control of the activities 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 with regard to the murders of Robert F. Kennedy and King, who were killed within two months in succession.
Lawyers for Kennedy’s Killer have said for decades that it is unlikely that he will be a danger to society, and in 2021 he became a conditional council that Sirhan considered suitable for release. But Gov. Gavin Newsom rejected the decision in 2022 and kept him in the state prison. In 2023, another panel denied him release and said that he still has insight into what led him to shoot Kennedy.
RFK still stands like a hero for American liberals
Kennedy remains an icon for liberals, who see him as a champion for human rights that was also dedicated to combat poverty and racial and economic injustice. They often regard his murder as the last in a series of large tragedies that the US and his politics put on a darker, more conservative path.
He was a sometimes division during his life. Some critics thought he was late against the Vietnam War, and he launched his campaign for President in 1968 only after the Democratic Primary in New Hampshire exposed the political weakness of President Johnson.
Kennedy’s older brother appointed him the American attorney general and he remained a narrow assistant until JFK’s murder in Dallas. In 1964 he won an American senate seat from New York and was seen as the heir to the political legacy of the family.
(Except for the headline, this story was not edited by NDTV staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.)
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