The linear operators appearing in the Chapman-Enskog solutions to Kirkwood's Fokker-Planck kinetic equation and to Rice and Allnatt's kinetic equation are studied in this article. Existence proofs are given for the linearized Chapman-Enskog equations involving either the Fokker-Planck or the Rice-Allnatt operators. It is shown that the Fokker-Planck and Rice-Allnatt operators, defined in the domain appropriate to kinetic theory, are essentially self-adjoint. It is also shown that the spectrum of either of these operators coincides with the spectrum of the self-adjoint extension of the corresponding operator.