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.

  • 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…
B. A subsequent check with the Japanese National Police Agency confirmed the biographic data supplied by the National Maritime Union official. A ward check indicated that Richards originally resided in Japan from 1963 to 1964 and married TAKAYAMA Michiko in 1963. Both Richards and his wife left Japan for the United States in 1964. Richards returned alone to Japan about 15 April 1968. His wife's address in the United States is listed as 160 Hosoi (phonetic) Street, Carpenteria, California, 93013.

C. A photograph of Richards obtained from the Japanese police was shown to the National Maritime Union official and identified by him as the individual in subparagraph 1A above who had applied for a seaman's berth. The photograph of Richards bears no apparent resemblance to photographs of suspected assassin James Earl Ray provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

2. The above information has been given to the Legal Attache of the United States Embassy in Tokyo.

FOR THE DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR PLANS:

JAMES ANGLETON

CSCI-316/01774-68

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About this file

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.