The following statement is being released
on Dr. Martin Luther King Day by a large group of concerned Americans,
including Sen. Robert Kennedy’s children, RFK, Jr. and Kathleen Kennedy
Townsend, as part of an ongoing effort to educate the American public and to demand
new investigations into the assassinations of JFK, Malcom X, Martin Luther
King, Jr., and RFK.
On the
occasion of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a group of over 60 prominent American
citizens is calling upon Congress to reopen the investigations into the assassinations
of President John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr.,
and Senator Robert F.
Kennedy. Signers of the joint statement include Isaac Newton Farris Jr., nephew of Reverend King and past
president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; Reverend James M. Lawson
Jr., a close collaborator of Reverend King; and Robert F.
Kennedy Jr. and Kathleen Kennedy
Townsend, children of the late senator. The declaration is also
signed by numerous historians, journalists, lawyers and other experts on the
four major assassinations. I am the only non-American who has been asked to
sign this statement.
Other
signatories include G. Robert Blakey, the
chief counsel of the House Select
Committee on Assassinations, which determined in 1979 that President
Kennedy was the victim of a probable conspiracy; Dr. Robert
McClelland, one of the surgeons at Parkland Memorial Hospital in
Dallas who tried to save President Kennedy’s life and saw clear evidence he had
been struck by bullets from the front and the rear; Daniel Ellsberg,
the Pentagon Papers whistleblower who served as a national security advisor to
the Kennedy White House; Richard Falk,
professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University and a leading
global authority on human rights; Hollywood artists Alec Baldwin, Martin Sheen, Rob Reiner and Oliver Stone;
political satirist Mort Sahl; and musician David Crosby.
The joint
statement calls for Congress to establish firm oversight on the release of all
government documents related to the Kennedy presidency and assassination, as
mandated by the JFK Records Collection Act of 1992. This public transparency
law has been routinely defied by the CIA and other federal agencies. The Trump
White House has allowed the CIA to continue its defiance of the law, even
though the JFK Records Act called for the full release of relevant documents in
2017.
The group
statement also calls for a public inquest into “the four major
assassinations of the 1960s that together had a disastrous impact on the
course of American history.” This tribunal — which would hear testimony from
living witnesses, legal experts, investigative journalists, historians and
family members of the victims — would be modeled on the Truth and
Reconciliation hearings held in South Africa after the fall of apartheid. This
American Truth and Reconciliation process is intended to encourage Congress or
the Justice Department to reopen investigations into all four organized acts of
political violence.
Signers of
the joint statement, who call themselves the Truth and Reconciliation
Committee, are also seeking to reopen the Robert F. Kennedy assassination case,
stating that Sirhan Sirhan’s conviction was based on “a mockery of a trial.”
The forensic evidence alone, observes the statement, demonstrates that Sirhan
did not fire the fatal shot that killed Senator Kennedy — a conclusion reached
by, among others, Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the Los Angeles County Coroner who
performed the official autopsy on RFK.
The joint
statement — which was co-written by Adam Walinsky, a speechwriter and top aide
of Senator Kennedy — declares that these “four major political
murders traumatized American life in the 1960s and cast a
shadow over the country for decades thereafter. John F. Kennedy, Malcolm
X, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were each in his own unique way
attempting to turn the United States away from war toward disarmament and
peace, away from domestic violence and division toward civil amity
and justice. Their killings were together a savage, concerted assault on
American democracy and the tragic consequences of these assassinations still
haunt our nation.”
The Truth and
Reconciliation Committee views its joint statement as the opening of a long
campaign aimed at shining a light on dark national secrets. As the public
transparency campaign proceeds, citizens across the country will be encouraged
to add their names to the petition. The national effort seeks to confront the
forces behind America’s democratic decline, a reign of secretive power that
long precedes the recent rise of authoritarianism. “The organized killing of
JFK, Malcolm, Martin, and RFK was a mortal attack on our democracy,” said
historian James Douglass, author of JFK
and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters . “We’ve
been walking in the valley of the dead ever since. Our campaign is all
about recovering the truth embodied in the movement they led. Yes, the
transforming, reconciling power of truth will indeed set us free.”