A researcher warned people to be sceptical of the FBI files as director Hoover ‘wanted dirt’ on King

The Rev Dr Martin Luther King jnr on the steps of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1956. The Trump Administration yesterday made public a vast trove of documents from the investigation into King's assassination in keeping with President Donald Trump’s executive order demanding their release. Photo / George Tames, the New York Times

More than 6000 documents related to the 1968 assassination of the Rev. Dr Martin Luther King jnr, totalling nearly 250,000 pages, were posted to the website of the United States National Archives yesterday, in what the Trump Administration hailed as a triumph of transparency.

But several noted King historians said they had found little in the way of new revelations about the death of the civil rights leader in the documents.

They noted that the trove does not include FBI wiretap recordings of King and other materials that remain under court seal until 2027.

The release yesterday, with no notice, came at a time when President Donald Trump and White House officials have sought to divert attention from a right-wing backlash demanding the release of files related to the death of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump Administration officials said the King assassination documents include notes on the leads pursued by investigators, interviews with people who knew his killer, James Earl Ray, and previously unreleased details of interactions with foreign intelligence services during the search for Ray.

A lone audio file released yesterday includes part of a law enforcement interview with Jerry Ray, one of James Earl Ray’s siblings.

In a statement, officials said the published documents had “never been digitised and sat collecting dust in facilities across the federal government for decades”.

Many of the pages have been rendered almost illegible by time and the digitising process.

There were random and wide-ranging accounts of the investigation and search for Ray, including hundreds of news clippings, tips from the public, accounts of Ray’s forays into dance classes and locksmith school, and his fondness for aliases drawn from James Bond novels.

David Garrow, the author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning King biography as well as a book about the FBI’s spying campaign on him, said his initial review led him to conclude that there was little of public interest in the files, much of which had already been disclosed.

“I saw nothing that struck me as new,” he said.

In 2019, Garrow published an article that recounted claims he had found in FBI documents released in relation to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Those claims include accounts of King witnessing an alleged rape in 1964 in a Washington hotel room where he had been staying.

It is unclear from the documents, which do not appear to be included in the current tranche, who is making those claims. Garrow was criticised by some historians for elevating incendiary assertions that were part of an FBI smear campaign, without corroborating evidence.

The FBI wiretaps and other surveillance were part of an effort to uncover damaging material on King, which the agency hoped to leverage in its campaign to derail the Civil Rights Movement.

Tapes and transcripts from that surveillance are part of what remains under seal, though summaries and other related material had been released previously. A federal judge last month denied a Justice Department request to unseal the surveillance records two years early.

King had a well-documented history of extramarital relationships.

Still, some experts and King’s family have expressed doubts about the veracity of some of the contents of those previously released documents, particularly when it comes to the more provocative claims about aspects of King’s romantic and sexual life.

Those details, they said, could be more reflective of official efforts to undermine the civil rights leader’s reputation than of reality.

“You’ve got to read this carefully and don’t take it at face value,” said Larry Sabato, the director of the Centre for Politics at the University of Virginia, who was reviewing the new documents yesterday with his own team of researchers.

“I’m sceptical of anything I read from FBI files about MLK,” he said, adding that he suspected that agents inflated or manufactured material to please J. Edgar Hoover, the agency’s longtime director.

“He wanted dirt on MLK and his movements and his associates.”

King’s surviving children, Martin III and Bernice, argued in a statement yesterday that their father had been “relentlessly targeted by an invasive, predatory, and deeply disturbing disinformation and surveillance campaign”.

The children beseeched researchers and the general public to view all of the material from the government’s files in the context of their father’s contributions to American society.

“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,” they said.

Trump Administration officials have been in contact with King’s family, but it remains unclear if his relatives were given the right to request redactions of the newly released material.

In a news release announcing the document upload, the Administration quoted Alveda King, King’s niece and a high-profile supporter of Trump, who praised the Government for providing transparency.

“The declassification and release of these documents are a historic step towards the truth that the American people deserve,” she said.

As a candidate last year, Trump vowed to release files related to Kennedy’s 1963 assassination, and the 1968 murders of Robert F. Kennedy and King. The Kennedy documents, released in March, contained little new information about the assassination itself.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Written by: Rick Rojas and Glenn Thrush

Photographs by: George Tames

©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES