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…
UNCLASSIFIED INTERNAL USE ONLY

CONFIDENTIAL

TO: (Officer designation, room number, and building)	DATE	OFFICER'S INITIALS	COMMENTS (Number each comment to show from whom to whom. Draw a line across column after each comment.)
RECEIVED	FORWARDED
1. DDO/PIC Mr. Randall GX-2 Pls relay to HT-1 Amber The attached 7 documents were surfaced by OS/IRG in its search on Subject. The documents originated in your component or predecessor component.
Please review the documents to determine if they can be released to Subject in full, in sanitized form, or they are to be denied.
If the documents are releasable in full, please have them declassified by an authorized officer of your component.
If deletions are to be made, please make them and forward the sanitized version to this Staff to send to the requester. Cite the FOIA subsection which applies to the deleted portions.
If the document is denied please cite the appropriate subsection(s) of the FOIA.
In both of the above instances please name the denying official.
We do not know anything more about this incident. Inasmuch as it apparently did not appear in the press, I am afraid that the information in these memoranda, if put into the public domain, could jeopardize our relationship with the person who provided it to us. Therefore both documents are being denied pursuant to exemptions (b)(1), (b)(2), (b)(3)(a) and (b)(6).
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3.	29 Jul 16	30 Jul 16	11D
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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.