Documents / FOIA release

FOIA on Martin Luther King

Central Intelligence Agency · 2025-06-12 · 295 pages · text by OCR

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.

Open the PDF at page 282 Original source ↗

“Nevers”14 pages

  • p. 167 …mysterious autopsy photographs which the Warren Commission never saw—do they support the Commission's lone…
  • p. 169 …The Kent State incident had never been fully cleared up. But one subject seemed to loom…
  • p. 170 …I worked there years and never saw or heard any-suggesting the Agency was involved assassination…
  • p. 171 …There was occasional stress, but it never reached the high level I was finding in the…
  • p. 172 …The bullets never gained perfectly intact, as the one found the stretcher, they became twisted lumps…
  • p. 173 …The word "never" was a perfectly "trimmed hedge." "I have found nothing since that time." he…
  • p. 206 …and documents were destroyed through some catastrophe never resumed business or were permanently closed down within…
  • p. 250 …mysterious autopsy photographs which the Warren Commission never saw—do they support the Commission's lone…
  • p. 252 …The Kent State incident had never been fully cleared up. But one subject seemed to loom…
  • p. 253 …I worked there three years and never saw or heard anying suggesting the Agency was involved…
  • p. 254 …There was occasional stress, but it never reached the high level I was finding in the…
  • p. 255 …The bullets never mained perfectly intact, as the one found in the stretcher; they became twisted…
  • p. 256 …The word "never" was a perfectly "trimmed hedge." I have found nothing since that time." he…
  • p. 291 …Union member on 21 February 1968 but never shipped out. His Social Security Number is 562…
UNCLASSIFIED INTERNAL USE ONLY

CONFIDENTIAL

SECRET

PRIORITY HANDLING

TO: (Officer designation, room number, and building)	DATE	OFFICER'S INITIALS
RECEIVED	FORWARDED
1. C/AF/Staffa. Att: Mr. toy
2. 3B-17-C
3. N. Wilson HT-3
4. The documents may not be released.
Addis Ababa 2200 (IN 99685), 28 April 1968 identifies the source and does not pertain to James Earl Ray or Martin Luther King, or any known suspect, accomplice or associate. To release it would violate the privacy of another U.S. person.
The information contained in paras 1 and 3 of IN 00793, 30 April 1968 was acquired from a liaison source, the Nigerian Special Branch. Paragraph 2 identifies a source of intelligence and the information therein does not pertain to James Earl Ray, Martin Luther King, or any known suspect, accomplice or associate. To release the information would violate the privacy of another U.S. person.
CSCI 316/01685-68 may not be released since it merely repeats the information contained in the two cables above, and the exemptions applied to them are equally
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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.