CIA personnel removed roughly 40 boxes of JFK assassination and MKUltra documents from the custody of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard's office while those records were under review 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 files still have not been returned.
CIA whistleblower James Erdmann III testified Wednesday before the Senate Homeland Security Committee that the agency "took back 40 boxes of JFK and MKUltra files." He also told lawmakers the CIA "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 sourced reporting hold up, the picture is stark: an intelligence agency physically seized records that the nation's top intelligence official was reviewing for public release, under cover of darkness, during a period when most of the federal government had shut down. And then refused to give them back.
Erdmann appeared before the committee under subpoena from Chairman Paul. His testimony covered two distinct tracks of alleged CIA misconduct. First, the removal of the JFK and MKUltra files. Second, the claim that the agency surveilled Gabbard's own investigators as they probed the origins of Covid-19.
The CIA did not deny the hearing happened. But spokesperson Liz Lyons attacked the proceedings in a social media post and in statements to reporters, calling the committee's process illegitimate:
"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."
Lyons went further, dismissing the entire hearing as theater:
"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 statement is worth reading twice. The CIA's spokesperson did not address whether the agency took the documents. She did not deny the surveillance allegations. She attacked the format of the hearing and the credibility of the witness, then pivoted to the agency's existing position on Covid origins. That is not a denial. It is a deflection.
Gabbard has been a persistent irritant to the intelligence establishment since taking office as DNI, pressing for transparency on surveillance authorities and classified records alike. The alleged seizure of documents under her review fits a pattern of institutional resistance to outside oversight.
NewsNation's Katie Pavlich reported additional details. She said she spoke to an intelligence official who confirmed that CIA personnel took documents related to the JFK assassination and MKUltra from the National Reconnaissance Office. The removal did not happen on the day of the hearing, Pavlich clarified, and it was not a raid on Gabbard's office in the conventional sense.
But the timing and circumstances raise their own questions. Pavlich reported the documents were taken "last year", during the government shutdown, in the middle of the night. The CIA has not returned them and, in Pavlich's words, "is withholding them from ODNI."
The ODNI, the office Gabbard leads, sits above the CIA in the intelligence community's chain of command. The DNI has statutory authority over classified records and declassification reviews. Former CIA officer John Kiriakou, speaking to Fox News' Jesse Watters on Wednesday night, made the jurisdictional point bluntly:
"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 added: "Real life isn't supposed to work this way."
He is right. A subordinate agency does not get to physically remove records from the custody of its superior and then refuse to return them. That is not a policy disagreement. It is insubordination, and potentially a violation of federal records law.
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 Rep. James Comer also asked CIA Director John Ratcliffe to preserve all related records, a move designed to prevent any quiet destruction of evidence while the dispute plays out.
Luna stated that ODNI had jurisdiction over the documents and that Congress had separately requested them. Rep. Tim Burchett put it more colorfully: "The CIA lied about MK Ultra existing. 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."
Burchett's point lands because it rests on documented history. The CIA denied the existence of MKUltra for years. The program, which involved illegal human experimentation with drugs, sensory deprivation, and psychological manipulation, only came to light through congressional investigations in the 1970s after the agency was forced to produce records it had tried to destroy. The idea that the same agency would now physically seize files related to MKUltra and the JFK assassination, in the dead of night, during a government shutdown, and then refuse to return them to the nation's top intelligence official, is not a conspiracy theory. It is a pattern.
The broader tensions around Gabbard's tenure as DNI have been well documented. She has clashed with elements of the national security establishment on multiple fronts, from intelligence assessments to surveillance policy. Those disputes have at times put her at odds not only with career officials but with other parts of the administration itself.
The most telling feature of the CIA's response is what it left out. Lyons called the hearing "dishonest political theater." She questioned Erdmann's motives. She noted the committee had already obtained closed-door testimony from the witness previously.
She did not say the documents were never taken. She did not say they had been returned. She did not explain why CIA personnel were at the National Reconnaissance Office removing boxes in the middle of the night. She did not address the surveillance allegations against Gabbard's investigators.
That silence matters. Federal agencies that have clean hands on a specific factual question typically say so. They issue flat denials. They point to legal authority. The CIA's decision to attack the process rather than address the substance suggests the substance is the problem.
Gabbard's political evolution from Democratic congresswoman to Trump-appointed DNI has made her a target from multiple directions. But whatever one thinks of her politics, the question here is straightforward: does the CIA get to physically remove classified records from the DNI's declassification review and then stonewall their return?
The answer, under any reading of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, is no. The DNI was created precisely to impose order and accountability on an intelligence community that had operated as a collection of independent fiefdoms. The CIA's alleged conduct here is a direct challenge to that statutory authority.
Several facts remain unclear. The exact date of the document removal has not been publicly established beyond "last year" during the shutdown. The specific contents of the 40 boxes have not been disclosed. The identities of the two intelligence community officials who confirmed the seizure to the Daily Caller have not been revealed. And whether the CIA has offered any private justification for withholding the records from the ODNI is unknown.
The surveillance allegations are equally unresolved. Erdmann testified that the CIA "illegally monitored the computer and phone usage" of Gabbard's investigators. If true, that would mean the CIA was spying on the people who were investigating the CIA, a level of institutional self-protection that would make even hardened intelligence observers uneasy. Gabbard herself has previously faced accusations of unlawful surveillance from political opponents, making the irony of the current allegations all the sharper.
The CIA's refusal to engage on the merits leaves Congress with limited options. Luna's 24-hour deadline and subpoena threat represent the most immediate pressure point. But subpoenas to intelligence agencies have a long history of being slow-walked, contested, and ultimately litigated into irrelevance. Whether this time will be different depends on whether Republican leadership treats the matter as a genuine constitutional confrontation or lets it fade into the background noise of Washington.
The JFK assassination files have been the subject of public demand for decades. Congress passed a law in 1992 requiring their full release. Presidents of both parties have delayed compliance. President Trump ordered their declassification. Gabbard was reviewing them for release. And now the CIA has allegedly removed them from her custody.
The MKUltra files carry their own weight. The program represents one of the most documented cases of government abuse of its own citizens in American history. The public's right to those records is not debatable. It was settled by litigation, by congressional investigation, and by the passage of time.
For an agency that claims to serve the American people, seizing those records from the official charged with making them public is not a bureaucratic dispute. It is a statement of priorities. And those priorities have nothing to do with national security and everything to do with institutional self-preservation.
When a subordinate agency takes files from its boss in the middle of the night and then refuses to give them back, the word for that isn't "interagency disagreement." It's defiance. And defiance, in a republic, is supposed to have consequences.
