Robert F. Kennedy assassination: 10,000 pages of records released; Tulsi Gabbard says ‘will shine light on the truth’

The Donald Trump administration on Friday released approximately 10,000 pages of records related to the 1968 assassination of former Senator Robert Francis Kennedy. The release continues the disclosure of national secrets ordered by the President.

The US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said that the RFK files’ release will “shine a long-overdue light on the truth,” an AP report said. 

“Nearly 60 years after the tragic assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, the American people will, for the first time, have the opportunity to review the federal government’s investigation thanks to the leadership of President Trump,” Gabbard was quoted as saying in the report. 

The US National Archives and Records Administration posted roughly 229 files containing the pages on its website.

In an interview with FoxNews, Gabbard said, “What we have just released here today is 10,000 pages that have been sitting in boxes within the National Archives”.

“This came about because President Trump promised the American people that his administration would be one of maximum transparency,” she added.

Many files related to the senator’s assassination had been previously released, but others had not been digitised and sat for decades in storage facilities maintained by the federal government.

Kennedy was fatally shot on June 5, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles moments after giving his victory speech for winning California’s Democratic presidential primary. His assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, was convicted of first-degree murder and is serving life in prison.

Trump’s promise to release RFK, JFK files 

US President Donald Trump had signed an executive order to declassify these records, as well as the records regarding the assassination of former president John F Kennedy, and the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr, on January 24. 

“The Executive Order establishes the policy that, more than 50 years after these assassinations, the victims’ families and the American people deserve the truth,” a White House statement said.

The order directed the Director of National Intelligence and other appropriate officials to present a plan within 15 days for the full and complete release of all John F Kennedy assassination records and immediately review the records relating to the Robert F Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr assassinations and present a plan for their full and complete release within 45 days.

JFK’s assassination records released 

The release of the RFK files comes just a month after unredacted files related to the 1963 assassination of former president John F Kennedy were disclosed. Those documents gave curious readers more details about Cold War-era covert U.S. operations in other nations but didn’t initially lend credence to long-circulating conspiracy theories about who killed JFK.