Recently President Donald Trump’s administration released more than 230,000 pages of previously sealed documents related to the April 4, 1968, Memphis assassination of King, shown marching with supporters above.
The release was conducted in accordance with Trump's Executive Order 14176.
This disclosure is the product of months of collaboration between the Department of Justice (DOJ), Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). DOJ Attorneys spent hundreds of hours preparing and digitizing these documents for release, a DOJ news release stated.
"The American people deserve answers decades after the horrific assassination of one of our nation’s great leaders," said Attorney General Pam Bondi. "The Department of Justice is proud to partner with Director Gabbard and the ODNI at President Trump’s direction for this latest disclosure."
Terris Todd is a former Trump White House Education Department appointee, who now works with the Project 21 Black Leadership Network. He was amazed at the sheer volume of material.
“The fact that it was that many pages, it's really astounding. And it also lets us know that there's more than meets the eye, right? So there's probably some very confidential information that's in there that probably individuals didn't want to have leaked out." Many of the documents were related to James Earl Ray, who was convicted of the murder and whether he acted alone.
"Someone in my opinion has to provide him with somebody in detail of exactly where he was going to be at one particular time and location. So, I don't think that someone could pull that off alone to be honest with you."
And then there was the surveillance of King partly driven by the then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's concerns about potential communist ties.
“I do believe that there's potentially some intel there as well that maybe he did ascribe to some of those ideologies, maybe that's in those 230,000 pages as well. Who was he possibly communicating with who were socialist or communist? The jury is still out on that one."
