The Trump administration has declassified a large batch of formerly secret documents related to the FBI’s wiretapping of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the investigation of his assassination in 1968. Coordinated by the Justice Department, the release happens four years before the files were originally scheduled for declassification in 2027. A DOJ statement explained that the files were made public under an executive order President Trump signed in January 2025. Order 14176 instructs agencies to expedite the declassification of records connected to the killings of President Kennedy, Senator Kennedy, and Dr. King. The new documents total about 230,000 pages that focus on King’s assassination, along with an extra 200,000 pages of FBI surveillance files. The FBI, CIA, Justice Department, National Archives, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence all took part in the declassification process. The Justice Department underscored that the principal goal of the release is to enhance transparency and to enable the public to examine the complete historical record.
The newly made public surveillance files lay bare the FBI’s relentless surveillance of King, stretching from the late 1950s through the 1960s. They contain tapped telephone conversations, concealed devices planted in hotel suites, and steady streams of informant accounts. Executed under Hoover’s command and folded into the COINTELPRO campaign, the methods have for decades drawn fire from historians and advocates who label them both racially charged and politically motivated. The fresh memos catalogue both the public and private domains of King’s life—drafts of speeches, itineraries, and sinister proposals aimed at tarnishing his name and shaking the foundations of the civil rights movement. Until now, the documents lay behind the lock of a 1977 federal injunction designed to lift in 2027, but an order from Trump accelerated the timeline to 2025. They can now be consulted at the National Archives.
The recently opened files now supplement the historical record of Martin Luther King Jr.’s murder on April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel, adding more detail than the long-circulated surveillance documents. Included are notes on the arrest of James Earl Ray, his trial, and subsequent claims of a larger plot. Correspondence from the latest batch details exchanges about Ray’s discussions with a fellow inmate describing his life just before the shooting. There are also internal FBI memos cataloging unreviewed leads, alternative suspects, and traces of supposed accomplices, lines of inquiry only partially acknowledged previously. Former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced the declassification of these records early this year, a watershed moment for those reassessing the circumstances surrounding King’s last hours.
Martin Luther King Jr.’s children, Martin Luther King III and Bernice King, were informed just ahead of the publication. In a public statement, they urged the public to read the documents carefully and in context, cautioning that they might still include unverifiable details or misleading interpretations. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the organization that King helped build, supported that call for a patients and measured reckoning with the past. Several civil rights leaders warned that select excerpts could be misused to sully King’s reputation or to resuscitate long-debunked conspiracy theories about his life. The FBI, for its part, reiterated its regret regarding the scope of its surveillance, though that regret acquires substance only now that the complete archive has been made available.
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