Two Republican lawmakers visited CIA headquarters Thursday to investigate the agency’s removal last year of 40 boxes of files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the spy agency’s MKUltra program that were being processed for release to the public.
The boxes were taken from National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard’s office for unknown reasons sometime last year, but the move prompted the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to send a letter to the CIA ordering it to preserve the documents.
The revelation about the boxes came from Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who, along with fellow GOP Rep. Eric Burlison of Missouri, traveled to CIA headquarters in McLean, Virginia, on Thursday.
Ms. Luna said the pair aimed “to see the files in question taken” from Ms. Gabbard’s office.
Ms. Luna sparked a social media meltdown on Wednesday after a clip of her talking about a “coup” to seize the files went viral.
Appearing on News Nation, Ms. Luna said lawmakers had just learned the CIA “went in and took documents” out of Ms. Gabbard’s office that pertained to the presidential assassination and MKUltra, the CIA’s secret program dating back to the 1950s involving mind-control experiments.
The congresswoman said the move “seems like an internal coup,” but later downplayed the CIA’s actions after online chatter claimed the agency “raided” Ms. Gabbard’s office while President Trump and CIA Director John Ratcliffe were in China this week.
“I am noticing a few large accounts stating falsely that I claimed there was a raid on Tulsi Gabbard’s office by the CIA,” Ms. Luna said Thursday. “This is completely false.”
The CIA, she said, “took documents that ODNI has jurisdiction over.”
The CIA’s removal of the boxes sparked fear of a government cover-up.
Mr. Trump ordered the declassification of all remaining classified JFK files, resulting in the publication of 770,000 documents last year. The CIA’s MKUltra files, about 20,000 documents, were released in 1977, while thousands of other documents were destroyed long ago by the agency.
Neither Ms. Luna nor others on the Oversight panel know exactly what files were removed by the CIA or why they were taken.
“The CIA has 24 hours to return the documents to Tulsi Gabbard’s office or else I will make a motion to issue a subpoena. These documents have been requested by Congress,” Ms. Luna said Wednesday.
A spokeswoman for Ms. Gabbard denied there was a raid of the office but did not provide additional details about the box-shuffling.
“The CIA did not raid the DNI’s office,” she said.
The House Oversight letter seeking preservation of the documents is addressed to Mr. Ratcliffe. Lawmakers wrote to him that they learned the CIA “took back” the 40 boxes from testimony that took place during a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs hearing.
