US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard speaks during a press briefing in the Brady Briefing Room at the White House in Washington, DC, on July 23, 2025. US intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard said on August 20 that she will make heavy cuts to her office, which she declared has "fallen short" of fulfilling its mandate and is "rife with abuse of power."
ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP
Confusion erupted Thursday following reports that the Central Intelligence Agency allegedly “raided” the office of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and seized files related to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the MK-Ultra program, and other classified records.
According to a report by Fox News, the CIA allegedly removed “dozens of boxes” from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), containing records undergoing declassification.
The development was linked to Executive Order 14176 signed by Donald Trump on 23 January 2025, directing the ODNI and other officials to review and release records related to the assassinations of Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr.
On 8 April 2025, the ODNI announced the creation of the Director’s Initiatives Group (DIG), a task force aimed at “restoring trust, transparency, and accountability” within the intelligence community.
On Thursday, Anna Paulina Luna said on X that the CIA had 24 hours to return the documents to the ODNI before she would move to issue a subpoena. She added that the files had been requested by Congress and tagged both CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Gabbard in the post.
Hours later, Luna clarified that the incident was “not a raid” and did not occur Thursday, but claimed “it did take place,” adding that lawmakers had only recently become aware of it through reports and briefings.
Meanwhile, James Erdman III testified before the US Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Wednesday, alleging that intelligence officials covered up the origins of COVID-19.
DNI Press Secretary Olivia Coleman denied the Fox News report, posting on X: “This is false — the CIA did not raid the DNI’s office.”
In an interview with The Harvard Gazette in March 2025, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Fredrik Logevall said his review of 77,000 pages of declassified JFK records from the National Archives and Records Administration revealed that 14 Cuban diplomats in 1963 were CIA agents.
Logevall said the documents highlighted the scale of CIA operations abroad during the Cold War.
“In certain embassies, those who are attached to the CIA could make up almost half the total personnel,” the Harvard article stated.
Among the files reportedly involved in the controversy was MK-Ultra, the CIA’s covert mind-control research program conducted between 1953 and 1964.
Journalist-author Stephen Kinzer previously described MK-Ultra as “essentially a continuation of work that began in Japanese and Nazi concentration camps.”
As of Thursday, neither Gabbard nor Ratcliffe had issued an official statement directly addressing the issue.
