A fresh clash at the highest levels of the intelligence community erupted Wednesday amid allegations that CIA officials quietly removed sensitive JFK assassination and MKUltra files that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbards office was preparing to declassify.
According to Western Journal, the controversy centers on claims that CIA personnel intervened in the declassification process, with two intelligence community officials telling The Daily Caller that agency staff took possession of records tied both to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy and to the CIAs notorious Cold War-era MKUltra program. The documents, reportedly under active review by Gabbards office for public release, were said by some sources to have been seized in what was initially described as a raid, even as other officials later pushed back on that characterization.
Those same investigators were also reported to be examining allegations regarding the origins of COVID, a subject that has long raised questions about transparency and accountability within federal agencies. MKUltra, which has become a byword for government overreach and abuse of power, involved CIA experiments with drugs, psychological manipulation, and alleged mind control, and has fueled public distrust of the intelligence apparatus for decades.
The emerging dispute quickly drew the attention of Florida Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who issued a pointed warning to the CIA that the agency could face a congressional subpoena if the disputed records were not returned to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. According to NewsNation, Luna said the CIA would be given just 24 hours to comply, underscoring growing frustration among conservatives who see entrenched bureaucrats as defying lawful oversight and the clear directives of President Donald Trump.
The reason why this is troubling, there was an executive order that the president directed the full declassification of JFK, Luna told NewsNations Katie Pavlich, highlighting what many on the right view as a pattern of intelligence agencies slow-walking or outright resisting presidential orders they dislike. She further noted that the CIA had long maintained that all MKUltra-related documents had either been made public or destroyed, a claim now cast into doubt by the latest allegations.
So, these are allegedly those documents that apparently never existed, Luna said, suggesting that the agency may have misled both Congress and the American people about the true extent of its historical activities. She also argued that the CIA has no lawful authority to obstruct or undermine a presidential directive, especially one dealing with long-ago events that bear directly on public trust in government.
The CIA does not have jurisdiction to work against an executive order by the president, she added, framing the dispute as a constitutional issue of executive authority versus an unelected security bureaucracy. NewsNation reported that the contested records form part of a broader push to declassify files related not only to JFK, but also to Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., UFO investigations, and Jeffrey Epstein, all topics that have fueled widespread suspicion of institutional cover-ups.
Later on Wednesday, Pavlich posted on X that an intelligence official disputed early accounts describing the incident as a raid, attempting to soften the narrative of an aggressive CIA intervention. According to Pavlich, the official claimed the documents had actually been removed last year from archives during the government shutdown, though that explanation does little to address why they remain out of reach of Gabbards office.
The same source also asserted that the CIA has continued to withhold the records from the Director of National Intelligence, effectively blocking them from being scanned and released to the public despite President Trumps clear declassification order. For many Americans already skeptical of the intelligence establishment, the episode reinforces a troubling question: if agencies can quietly spirit away files on JFK, MKUltra, and other dark chapters of U.S. history, how many more times will citizens be asked to trust institutions that appear determined to keep them in the dark?
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