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.
“Betty”1 page
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## SLCRET 23. Although the National Archives are the repository for the Kennedy assassination documents, the FBI and the CIA are responsible for restricting research. Much of the 300 cubic feet of documents have been printed, a reclassification in 1971 has released 3,000 pages, and the CIA later released more, but none of the material released has created any sensation. The Freedom of Information Act is not as liberal on assassination material as on other matters. Some material was not even turned over to the Warren Commission. The FBI and the Justice Department are alone in knowing the results of some tests. 24. In the non-governmental area, much has been published, and the book by Peter Noyes must be singled out particularly. 25. Speech by Mr. Robert Hanson. Mr. Hanson has become the counsel for Sirhan Sirhan. He studied to become an engineer and then shifted to law. (To judge from the number of cases which he says he has lost, he should have remained an engineer instead of becoming an attorney.) Mr. Hanson said that the Sirhan case is pretty hopeless. The trial was based on a 100 per cent belief in Sirhan's guilt. Therefore important witnesses were not called, and no attention was paid to ballistics. Scientific study, however, indicates that Sirhan Sirhan may not even have been the person who committed the crime. But even if it is proved that his gun did not kill Robert Kennedy, this discovery may have no influence upon Sirhan's case. California officials have no desire to reopen the case and funds to handle the proceedings are lacking. A book by Tiger on the case is worthy of note. Tiger claims that Sirhan Sirhan was acting under hypnotic influence. 26. Speech by James Lesar. Mr. Lesar, who spoke on the Martin Luther King assassination, declared that Ray was innocent, and that the FBI and the Justice Department were responsible for wrongly solving the crime. Ray was framed by conspirators. The persons presently involved in Watergate played a role in the Ray case investigation. No private agency - only a government agency - can solve the Ray case. All depends on whether the judiciary acts honestly or with political consideration in mind. As it stands today, we see Ray's rights having been abominably violated; we see lawyers who did not do their job; and we see nothing approaching an open hearing.
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 295 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.