Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency FOIA release, dated 2025-06-12, collects 1976 CIA paperwork on Harold Weisberg's request (76-F-382) for records on Martin Luther King, Jr. It includes routing slips, an Operations Staff memorandum listing releasable press items and exempt cables, dispatches and memoranda, and a CI Staff reply citing a 1968 Office of Security memo on Coretta Scott King. It also contains a 16 May 1968 memo to the FBI reporting that Gerald Lee Richards, investigated in Japan, did not resemble suspect James Earl Ray.
“Nevers”14 pages
James H. Lesar, Esquire 1231 Fourth Street, S.W. Washington, DC 20024
## IPS/DGV/cr/29 Nov 76 Distribution:
Dear Mr. Lesar:
Orig. - Addressee
1 - OGC (Strickland)
1 - DDO/PICG
1 - OS/IRG
1 - AI/DDA
$ \textcircled{1} $ - IPS (Neisberg,F-76-382) SPR
1 - IPS (Weisberg Correspondence)
1 - IPS Chrono
You will recall that our letter of 21 June 1976 acknowledged receipt of your letter on behalf of Mr. Harold Weisberg requesting, under provisions of the Freedom of Information Act, access to any CIA records dealing with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and to those dealing with James Earl Ray and any of his alleged or suspected accomplices in Dr. King's assassination.
We find that we are unable to respond to your request as it now stands due to legal and regulatory restrictions on the release of personal information from official records. In that light, please be advised that we can proceed no further with your request unless and until we are in receipt of notarized statements of release from Mrs. Coretta King and James Earl Ray, respectively. These statements should be quite specific as to what areas of personal information are and are not authorized for release by this Agency to you and your client. If all information in our records is releasable, that should be so stated; if only such information as relates to specific incidents or to specific periods of time is releasable, those caveats should be clearly stated.
Finally, we must ask that you provide a statement of willingness to pay search and duplication fees as required by this request and in line with the fee schedule enclosed. It has been estimated that such charges could approach $1000. Along with the notarized statements above, and the statement of willingness to pay all search and copying charges (or those up to an established limit), we would require a down payment of half the anticipated charges. Payment should be made to this office in the form of a check or money order payable to Treasurer of the United States.
Gene F. Wilson Information and Privacy Coordinator Not linked to a story yet.
FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. The text was read from the page images by an OCR model; expect the odd misread word. 295 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.