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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.