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"These are allegedly those documents that apparently never existed."

— Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL)

By Samuel López | USA Herald Last Updated: May 14, 2026 | Breaking National Security & Government Accountability

Forty boxes. Vanished. Reclaimed in the dead of night — by the very agency they were meant to expose.

That's not a conspiracy theory. That's sworn testimony delivered before the United States Senate.

On May 13, 2026, CIA whistleblower James Erdman III — a senior operations officer with nearly two decades of service inside the most powerful intelligence agency on earth — sat before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and dropped a bombshell that should shake every American citizen to their core: the Central Intelligence Agency seized approximately 40 boxes of files related to the JFK assassination and the MKUltra mind-control program directly from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — Tulsi Gabbard's office — just as those records were being processed for declassification.

Let that land.

Not foreign adversaries. Not hackers. Not a cyberattack. The CIA took the documents from its own oversight body. From the office of the woman who oversees it. And they did it while President Trump was thousands of miles away overseas.

If that doesn't make the hair on the back of your neck stand up, read it again.

THE TESTIMONY THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING

Erdman didn't arrive at Wednesday's Senate hearing to make friends. He came to tell the truth — and he did, even after the CIA tried to preemptively discredit him before he opened his mouth.

CIA spokeswoman Liz Lyons fired a warning shot before Erdman ever took his seat, claiming the committee acted in "bad faith" by subpoenaing an agency officer without prior notification. She called the proceedings "dishonest political theater masquerading as a congressional hearing."

Political theater. That's what the CIA calls sworn testimony to the United States Senate.

But here's what Erdman actually alleged under oath:

• The CIA "took back 40 boxes of JFK and MKUltra files" from ODNI that were actively being processed for declassification under a presidential executive order.
• CIA personnel "illegally monitored the computer and phone usage" of Gabbard's investigators — American intelligence officials operating under direct authority from the President of the United States.
• The document seizure was part of what Erdman described as "documented efforts to circumvent oversight."

This isn't anonymous sourcing. This isn't a leak. This is a career CIA officer, on the record, before Congress, accusing his own agency of operating above and beyond the law — and above the authority of the President himself.

REP. ANNA PAULINA LUNA DRAWS A LINE IN THE SAND

Within hours of Erdman's testimony, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), Chairwoman of the House Oversight Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, issued one of the most pointed ultimatums a sitting member of Congress has delivered to an intelligence agency in recent memory:

Return the documents. In 24 hours. Or face a congressional subpoena.

Luna sent a formal preservation notice to CIA Director John Ratcliffe, demanding the agency preserve and return all existing and future records related to JFK, RFK, MLK, and MKUltra. She made crystal clear that ODNI — Gabbard's office — was granted explicit presidential authority to declassify these records. She accused the CIA of "actively undermining an executive order" signed by President Trump in January 2025.

Let's be precise about what that executive order said: Trump directed the full declassification of files related to the JFK assassination. Not partial. Not "when convenient." Full. And since then, the CIA has slow-walked, stalled, and — if this testimony is accurate — physically removed the very documents the President ordered released to the American people.

Luna later told NewsNation what may be the most chilling line of this entire story:

"These are allegedly those documents that apparently never existed."

Documents that "never existed." A phrase that should send a chill down the spine of every citizen who believes in a government that answers to the people.

WHO'S REALLY IN CHARGE HERE?

This is the question that cuts to the bone of this entire story, and it's a question the American people deserve a straight answer to:

If the President of the United States orders the declassification of documents, and the CIA takes those documents before they can be released — who is actually running this government?

The chain of command could not be clearer. The CIA reports to the Director of National Intelligence. The DNI reports to the President. That's not a debate. That's not a gray area. That is the law.

And yet, according to sworn testimony, while President Trump was overseas and Tulsi Gabbard's team was working through the declassification process as directed, CIA personnel entered the National Reconnaissance Office — in the middle of the night — and walked out with 40 boxes of some of the most historically significant documents in American history.

No raid. No subpoena. No warrant. Just the CIA doing what the CIA apparently does: protecting secrets the President himself has ordered revealed.

Former CIA officer John Kiriakou, speaking to Fox News, put it plainly: the agency "cannot overrule the president"and Americans "have a right to know what is in these files."

He's right. And the fact that we're even having this conversation tells you everything you need to know about the depth of institutional resistance buried inside Langley.

MKULTRA: THE PROGRAM THEY SWORE THEY ENDED

You want to know why the CIA is fighting so hard to keep those MKUltra files buried? Because what MKUltra actually was is something no government agency ever wants the public to fully comprehend in all of its documented, operational detail.

MKUltra wasn't a rogue experiment conducted by a few bad actors in a basement. It was a formally authorized, multi-decade CIA program that used American citizens — soldiers, prisoners, psychiatric patients, ordinary civilians — as unwitting test subjects for experiments involving LSD, psychological torture, sensory deprivation, hypnosis, and behavioral manipulation. The goal was simple and terrifying: mind control.

The program, which operated under code names including Bluebird and Artichoke before becoming MKUltra in 1953, was designed to produce confessions, extract intelligence, and control human behavior. And it was conducted on Americans. Without consent. Without knowledge. Without mercy.

Congress investigated in the 1970s. The CIA claimed most records had been destroyed. Yet somehow, 40 boxes of JFK and MKUltra materials were sitting in ODNI awaiting declassification — until the CIA came and took them back.

The documents don't just represent history. If they still exist in the volume Erdman described, they could represent evidence the CIA told Congress it had already destroyed.

That's not a transparency problem. That's potential obstruction on a generational scale.

And Rep. Luna knows it. That's exactly why she has announced upcoming congressional hearings specifically on MKUltra — to force the CIA to account for what it did, who it did it to, and what records it has been hiding while claiming they no longer exist.

THE JFK CONNECTION: SIXTY YEARS AND STILL CLASSIFIED

The JFK assassination files have been a flashpoint of government transparency battles for over six decades. In March 2025, the National Archives released roughly 80,000 pages of declassified JFK records. In July of the same year, thousands more documents related to MLK were published. Progress — real progress — was being made.

And then 40 boxes went missing.

President Trump had promised the American people complete disclosure. And ODNI, under Gabbard's direction, was making it happen — until the CIA apparently decided that some secrets are too big to release, regardless of what the President orders.

Here is what makes that position untenable: the JFK assassination happened in 1963. The victims, the witnesses, the conspirators if any existed, the intelligence operatives who knew anything about that day — most are dead. The Cold War is over. The geopolitical landscape that might have once justified secrecy has been gone for thirty years.

If the CIA's objection to releasing these files is genuinely about national security, they have never made that case with any specificity to Congress or the American public. You cannot invoke "national security" as a permanent, no-questions-asked shield for documents that are over sixty years old without offering at least a framework of justification.

And if it's not about national security — if it's about institutional self-protection, reputation management, or covering up what the agency actually knew about November 22, 1963 — then the American people have been lied to, methodically and deliberately, for six decades.

Either scenario is unacceptable in a democracy.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT — AND WHY TRUMP'S RESPONSE MATTERS

The ball is now squarely in President Trump's court — and his response to this could define the legacy of his administration's promise of government transparency.

Trump signed the executive order directing declassification. His own DNI, Tulsi Gabbard, was executing that order. And according to sworn testimony, the CIA moved to block that process by removing the physical documents from ODNI's possession.

If the President allows that to stand without consequence, his transparency mandate is hollow. If he acts — whether through direct orders to Ratcliffe, through executive escalation, or through a public confrontation with CIA leadership — it would signal something historic: that the permanent intelligence apparatus is not, in fact, beyond the reach of the elected government.

Rep. Luna has already moved. The preservation notice is sent. The 24-hour ultimatum has been issued. Congressional subpoenas are on the table.

The question is whether the President of the United States will use the full power of his office to demand that his own intelligence agency answer to him — and by extension, to the American people.

This isn't about politics. It's not about left or right, Democrat or Republican. It's about something far more fundamental:

Who does the United States government actually work for?

A CIA whistleblower testified under oath that the agency seized documents the President ordered released, monitored officials conducting a presidentially authorized investigation, and has been withholding records Congress has formally requested — all while claiming that anyone who asks too many questions is engaged in "political theater."

The American people deserve the JFK files. They deserve the MKUltra records. They deserve to know the full scope of what their government did in their name — with their tax dollars — to their fellow citizens.

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© 2026 USA Herald. All rights reserved. Reporting by Samuel López.