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| Martin Luther King Jr. |
Source: BBC
United States of America President Donald Trump has released many pages of classified documentation on the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr - including the FBI surveillance files on the leader.
About 230,000 pages were blocked in 1977, kept away from public view by a court-imposed order that kept the FBI documents secret.
But no longer.
Most members of the King family opposed the release of the documents. His two children said: "any attempts to misuse these documents in ways intended to undermine our father's legacy".
Martin Luther King Jr. was shot dead in cold blood in Memphis on April 4, 1968. He died at age 39. The killer, James Earl Ray, was a known career criminal and plead guilty to the killing. He later renounced his plea.
via the BBC:
King Jr's two living children, Martin III and Bernice, who were notified ahead of time about the release, said in a statement on Monday: "We ask those who engage with the release of these files to do so with empathy, restraint, and respect for our family's continuing grief.
"The release of these files must be viewed within their full historical context.
"During our father's lifetime, he was relentlessly targeted by an invasive, predatory, and deeply disturbing disinformation and surveillance campaign orchestrated by J Edgar Hoover through the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)."
The statement said the government's surveillance had denied King the "dignity and freedoms of private citizens".
On the campaign trail, Trump promised Americans he would release files on the assassinations of King and former President John F Kennedy.
He signed an executive order in January ordering that documents from both assassinations be declassified, along with the records in the assassination of Robert F Kennedy.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) said in a press release on Monday: "The MLK files in today's release had never been digitized and sat collecting dust in facilities across the federal government for decades, until today."
The documents include "internal FBI memos" and "never-before-seen CIA records" behind the hunt for King's assassin, the DNI said.
The release was co-ordinated with the FBI, Department of Justice, National Archives and CIA.
"The American people deserve answers decades after the horrific assassination of one of our nation's great leaders," US Attorney General Pamela Bondi said.
Trump's critics noted the release comes as the administration is accused of a lack of transparency over files relating to influential sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, whose 2019 jail death was ruled a suicide.
Civil rights leader Al Sharpton said the release of the King files was "a desperate attempt to distract" from "the firestorm engulfing Trump over the Epstein files and the public unraveling of his credibility".
Not all of King's family was upset about the release.
The documents can be found here below. Stone News Network has been reviewing them and yes, there are many redacted and blacked-out areas. Don't expect revelations. The photocopying technology in the 70's and digitization of the 80's and 90's are terrible.
Can you read this one?
Office of the Attorney General.
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