CIA personnel removed roughly 40 boxes of JFK assassination and MKUltra documents from the National Reconnaissance Office while Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard's team was reviewing them for declassification, two intelligence community officials told the Daily Caller. The removal reportedly happened in the middle of the night during last year's government shutdown, and the agency has not returned the files.
The disclosure landed publicly on Wednesday when CIA whistleblower James Erdmann III testified before the Senate Homeland Security Committee. Erdmann told lawmakers the agency "took back 40 boxes of JFK and MKUltra files" and "illegally monitored the computer and phone usage" of Gabbard's investigators, who had been looking into an alleged cover-up of the origins of Covid-19.
If the testimony and the intelligence officials' accounts are accurate, the picture is stark: a subordinate agency moved to reclaim sensitive historical records from the office of its own statutory superior, the DNI, under cover of darkness during a period of government dysfunction. The files remain in the CIA's hands. Congress is now threatening subpoenas to get them back.
Erdmann, described as a CIA operations officer, appeared before Chairman Paul's committee under subpoena. His testimony covered two explosive claims: first, that the agency physically retrieved the JFK and MKUltra boxes from the National Reconnaissance Office, where they had been staged for Gabbard's declassification review; and second, that the CIA tracked the digital activity of ODNI investigators probing the agency's handling of Covid-19 origin intelligence.
The CIA did not welcome the hearing. Spokesperson Liz Lyons posted on X that the committee "acted in bad faith by subpoenaing an Agency officer for testimony today without notifying CIA, despite having already obtained closed-door testimony from the individual previously."
Lyons went further in a formal statement:
"The witness testifying today is not appearing as a whistleblower in pursuit of the truth, but instead in response to the subpoena issued by Chairman Paul. This proceeding amounts to nothing more than dishonest political theater masquerading as a congressional hearing. As the CIA has already assessed, COVID-19 most likely originated from a lab leak, and efforts to undermine that conclusion are disingenuous."
That response is worth reading twice. The CIA's own spokesperson dismissed the hearing as theater, while simultaneously acknowledging the agency's lab-leak conclusion. The statement did not address the central allegation: that the agency removed 40 boxes of documents from a declassification review it did not control.
The broader pattern of tension between the intelligence community and officials appointed to hold it accountable is not new. Gabbard herself has sent criminal referrals to the DOJ over former intelligence officials tied to earlier Trump-era controversies.
NewsNation's Katie Pavlich provided additional detail, reporting that she spoke to an intelligence official who clarified the timeline. The documents "were not taken today and it was not a raid on DNI Gabbard's office," Pavlich wrote on X. Rather, "people from the CIA took documents (related to the JFK assassination/MKUltra) from the National Reconnaissance Office *last year* in the middle of the night during the government shutdown and have not returned/is withholding them from ODNI."
The distinction matters. This was not a dramatic raid timed to the whistleblower's testimony. It was, by the intelligence official's own account, a quiet retrieval carried out months ago, during a shutdown, when congressional oversight was at its weakest and public attention was elsewhere. The files have stayed with the CIA ever since.
MKUltra was an illegal CIA program that used drugs and psychological torture to develop mind control and interrogation techniques. The JFK assassination files have been the subject of decades of public demand for full transparency. Both sets of records carry enormous historical weight, and both were, at the time of removal, under the DNI's authority for potential release.
Republican Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna wasted no time. She threatened to subpoena the CIA if the files were not returned to the ODNI within 24 hours. The Washington Examiner reported that Luna and House Oversight Chairman James Comer also sent CIA Director John Ratcliffe a letter demanding preservation of all JFK assassination and MKUltra records, a signal that Congress views the agency's conduct as potential obstruction, not routine records management.
Rep. Tim Burchett added his own blunt assessment. "The CIA lied about MK Ultra existing," Burchett said. "They were sued and were forced to admit it but say they aren't doing it now. Which lie do you believe? Subpoena and preserve these documents now."
The confrontation between congressional Republicans and the intelligence establishment has been building for years. Federal prosecutors have separately targeted former CIA Director John Brennan with requests for Russia probe evidence held by the Senate, part of a broader reckoning over the intelligence community's conduct during and after the 2016 election.
John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer, appeared on Fox News with Jesse Watters Wednesday night and framed the issue in terms of legal authority. The CIA, he said, simply does not have the power to overrule either the president or the director of national intelligence on declassification.
"The CIA cannot overrule the president, and the CIA cannot even overrule the director of national intelligence. They are mandated to be declassified. The American people have a right to know what is in these files."
Kiriakou did not mince words about the situation: "Real life isn't supposed to work this way."
He is right on the chain of command. The DNI sits atop the intelligence community by statute. The CIA reports to the DNI, not the other way around. If the DNI's office was reviewing files for declassification and the CIA removed them without authorization, the agency acted outside its lane, regardless of whatever internal justification it may have offered.
The history of intelligence community resistance to transparency is long and well-documented. Declassified documents have previously raised questions about the handling of the whistleblower complaint that triggered Trump's first impeachment, another episode in which classified information and institutional prerogatives collided with political accountability.
Several questions hang over this story. The exact date the documents were removed has not been disclosed, only that it happened "last year" during the government shutdown. What specific records were in the 40 boxes has not been detailed publicly. Whether any formal authorization was sought or granted for the removal remains unclear.
The CIA spokesperson's statements focused almost entirely on attacking the Senate hearing's legitimacy and the whistleblower's motives. Lyons did not deny that documents were taken. She did not claim the removal was authorized. She did not say the files had been returned. The silence on the substance of the allegation is louder than the rhetoric about "political theater."
Whether the files are still intact, whether any records were altered or destroyed, and whether the CIA will comply with congressional demands or force a subpoena fight, all of that remains open. Luna's 24-hour deadline sets up a near-term test of whether the agency will cooperate or dig in.
The episode also raises questions about the scope of the alleged surveillance. Erdmann testified that the CIA "illegally monitored the computer and phone usage" of Gabbard's investigators. If true, that would mean the agency was not only withholding documents from its statutory superior but actively tracking the people trying to find them. That is not a bureaucratic turf dispute. That is an agency placing itself above the law.
Meanwhile, congressional investigations into intelligence community conduct continue to multiply. A Georgia state senator has launched a probe into a Biden-era DOJ grant tied to the Fani Willis investigation, and federal judges are navigating their own confrontations with former officials, including proceedings involving former FBI Director James Comey.
Strip away the procedural noise and the CIA spokesperson's indignation, and the core fact is simple. The American public has waited decades for full disclosure of the JFK assassination files and the MKUltra records. A president ordered declassification. The DNI was carrying out that review. And the CIA, the agency with the most to lose from transparency, removed the documents in the dead of night and kept them.
Lyons called the hearing "dishonest political theater." But the theater here is an agency that tells the public it supports transparency while physically carting away the evidence before anyone can read it.
When a subordinate agency removes files from its boss's desk in the middle of the night and then attacks the people who noticed, the word for that isn't "theater." It's insubordination.
