Newly Released CIA Files Detail Early 1960s Plot to Recruit Foreign Seaman for MLK-Linked Operation

A newly declassified CIA memorandum from May 1968 reveals a chilling account that could indicate a previously unexamined conspiracy tied to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination — one that allegedly began more than five years before his death.

According to the document, a Panamanian national named Roderick Claflin Brown signed a sworn deposition on April 16, 1968, recounting a suspicious encounter in October 1962 in Mobile, Alabama. 

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Brown said he was approached by a man identified as Marvin P. Littrell, owner of an auto business in Athens, Alabama, who allegedly described Dr. King as “our greatest problem” and offered Brown an unspecified job.

After initial contact, Brown received a letter in 1963 reaffirming a job offer and questioning why Brown had requested $75 in travel money to return to Alabama. 

Brown told U.S. authorities he grew suspicious the offer might have involved an assassination attempt targeting King and ultimately ignored the correspondence.

While Brown dismissed the event at the time, he came forward immediately after King’s assassination in April 1968. The CIA then forwarded the deposition and supporting documents to the FBI for further investigation.

What’s remarkable is the early date — 1962 — placing this alleged contact over five years before the actual assassination, long before King was viewed as a national threat by some officials. 

It raises questions about how long extremist or vigilante sentiments had been circulating in organized form and whether other such recruitment attempts went undetected or unreported.

The CIA noted it had no prior file on Marvin Littrell, and no direct evidence has surfaced connecting this incident to James Earl Ray or the 1968 Memphis assassination. 

Still, the early emergence of a recruitment offer targeting King suggests a longer and potentially deeper anti-King undercurrent than previously documented.

This deposition joins a growing set of more than 230,000 pages of newly released federal files on the assassinations of King, John F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy — declassified under Executive Order 14176.