The Trump administration has released records of the FBI's surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr, despite opposition from the slain Nobel laureate's family and the civil rights group he led until his 1968 assassination.
The digital document dump includes more than 240,000 pages of records that had been under a court-imposed seal since 1977, when the FBI first gathered the records and turned them over to the National Archives and Records Administration.
In a lengthy statement released on Monday, local time, Dr King's two living children, Martin III, 67, and Bernice, 62, said their father's killing has been a "captivating public curiosity for decades".
But the pair emphasised the personal nature of the matter and urged the files "be viewed within their full historical context".
The Kings gained advance access to the records and had their own teams reviewing them — efforts which continued even as the government granted public access.
Among the documents are leads the FBI received after Dr King's assassination and details of the CIA's fixation on Dr King's pivot to international anti-war and anti-poverty movements in the years before he was killed.
'An intensely personal grief'
It was not immediately clear whether the documents shed new light on Dr King's life, the civil rights movement or his murder.
"As the children of Dr King and Mrs Coretta Scott King, his tragic death has been an intensely personal grief," Bernice and Martin III said in their statement.
"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 also repeated the family's long-held contention that James Earl Ray, the man convicted of assassinating Dr King, was not solely responsible, if at all.
A statement from the office of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard called the disclosure "unprecedented" and said many of the records had been digitised for the first time.
She praised President Donald Trump for pushing the issue.
Release a 'transparency' to some, 'distraction' for others
Mr Trump promised as a candidate to release files related to President John F Kennedy's 1963 assassination.
When Mr Trump took office in January, he signed an executive order to declassify the JFK records, along with those associated with Robert F Kennedy's and Dr King's 1968 assassinations.
The government unsealed the JFK records in March and disclosed some RFK files in April.
The announcement from Ms Gabbard's office included a statement from Alveda King, Martin Luther King Jr's niece, who is an outspoken conservative and has broken from Dr King's children on various topics — including the FBI files.
Alveda King said she was "grateful to President Trump" for his "transparency".
The King records were initially intended to be sealed until 2027, until Justice Department attorneys asked a federal judge to lift the sealing order early.
This latest release comes as Mr Trump tries to appease supporters angry over his administration's handling of records concerning the sex trafficking investigation of Jeffrey Epstein.
Mr Trump ordered the Justice Department release grand jury testimony on Friday, local time, but stopped short of unsealing the entire case file.
"Trump releasing the MLK assassination files is not about transparency or justice," said civil rights activist Reverend Al Sharpton.
"It's a desperate attempt to distract people from the firestorm engulfing Trump over the Epstein files and the public unraveling of his credibility among the MAGA base."
AP
