WASHINGTON (AP) 鈥 About 10,000 pages of records related to the 1968 assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy were released Friday, including handwritten notes by the gunman, who said the Democratic presidential candidate 鈥渕ust be disposed of鈥 and acknowledged an obsession with killing him.
The release continued the disclosure of national secrets ordered by President Donald Trump.
Kennedy was fatally shot on June 5, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles moments after giving a speech celebrating his victory in California鈥檚 presidential primary. His assassin, , was convicted of first-degree murder and is serving life in prison.
The files included pictures of handwritten notes by Sirhan.
鈥淩FK must be disposed of like his brother was,鈥 read the writing on the outside of an empty envelope with the return address from the district director of the Internal Revenue Service in Los Angeles.
Sirhan also filled a page of a Pasadena City College notebook with variations of 鈥淩.F.K must die鈥 and 鈥淩.F.K must be killed.鈥 In a note dated May 18, 1968, he wrote: 鈥淢y determination to eliminate R.F.K. is becoming more of an unshakable obsession.鈥
In another of the newly released documents, the assassin said he advocated for 鈥渢he overthrow of the current president.鈥 Democrat Lyndon Johnson was in the White House at the time of RFK's death.
鈥淚 have no absolute plans yet, but soon will compose them,鈥 wrote Sirhan, who pledged support for communist Russia and China.
The newly released files also included notes from interviews with people who knew Sirhan from a wide variety of contexts, such as classmates, neighbors and coworkers. While some described him as 鈥渁 friendly, kind and generous person鈥 others depicted a brooding and 鈥渋mpressionable鈥 young man who felt strongly about his political convictions and briefly believed in mysticism.
According to the files, Sirhan told his garbage collector that he planned to kill Kennedy shortly after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. The coworker, a Black man, said he planned to vote for Kennedy because he would help Black people.
鈥淲ell, I don鈥檛 agree. I am planning on shooting the son of a bitch,鈥 Sirhan replied, the man told investigators.
FBI documents describe interviews with a group of tourists who had heard rumors about Kennedy being shot weeks before his death. Several people who visited Israel in May 1968 said a tour guide told them Kennedy had been shot. One person said he heard that an attempt on Kennedy鈥檚 life had been made in Milwaukee. Another heard that he was shot in Nebraska.
The 春色直播 Archives and Records Administration posted 229 files containing the pages to its public website. Many files related to the assassination had been previously released, but others had not been digitized and sat for decades in federal government storage facilities.
The release comes a month after unredacted files related to were disclosed. Those documents gave curious readers more details about in other nations but did not initially lend credence to long-circulating conspiracy theories about who killed JFK.
Trump, a Republican, has championed in the name of transparency the release of documents related to high-profile assassinations and investigations. But he鈥檚 also been deeply suspicious for years of the government鈥檚 intelligence agencies. His administration鈥檚 release of once-hidden files opens the door for additional public scrutiny and questions about the operations and conclusions of institutions such as the CIA and the FBI.
Trump in January calling for the release of government documents related to the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and King, who were killed within two months of each other.
Lawyers for Kennedy's killer have said for decades that he is unlikely to reoffend or pose a danger to society, and in 2021, a parole board deemed Sirhan suitable for release. But , keeping him in state prison. In 2023 denied him release, saying he still lacks insight into what caused him to shoot Kennedy.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a son of the New York senator who now serves as health and human services secretary, commended Trump and Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, for their 鈥渃ourage鈥 and 鈥渄ogged efforts鈥 to release the files.
鈥淟ifting the veil on the RFK papers is a necessary step toward restoring trust in American government,鈥 the health secretary said in a statement.
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Funk reported from Omaha, Nebraska. Associated Press writers Eric Tucker in Washington, Juan Lozano in Houston, John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, and Safiyah Riddle in Montgomery, Alabama, contributed to this report.
