{"id":65521,"date":"2026-05-27T06:32:37","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T10:32:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/?p=65521"},"modified":"2026-05-27T11:55:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T15:55:12","slug":"the-cia-odni-custody-war-over-jfk-and-mk-ultra-records","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/?p=65521","title":{"rendered":"

The CIA\/ODNI Custody War Over JFK and MK-ULTRA Records…….<\/span><\/b><\/h1>"},"content":{"rendered":"

…the Resignation of DNI Tulsi Gabbard, and the Pattern of Institutional Obstruction by the Central Intelligence Agency and Its Auxiliary Press<\/strong><\/h1>\n

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SOTN Editor’s Note: Just as quickly as it captured the world’s attention this May 2026, the unparalleled CIA ‘raid’ on DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s office, her subsequent resignation on May 22nd, and the testimony provided by CIA whistleblower — Operations Officer James E. Erdman III — to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on May 13th, the explosive story has all but disappeared from the both the mainstream and alternative media.\u00a0 Therefore, this Alt Media<\/em> platform highly commends J. Keven Hofeling for his detailed memorandum posted below, which both documents and renders an important analysis of these weighty and highly consequential events.<\/h3>\n
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MEMORANDUM<\/u><\/u><\/h1>\n<\/div>\n

TO:<\/strong>\u00a0Distribution List of Researchers and Scholars
\nFROM:<\/strong> J. Keven Hofeling, Esq. (Retired)
\nDATE:<\/strong>\u00a0May 24, 2026
\nRE:<\/strong> The CIA\/ODNI Custody War Over JFK and MK-ULTRA Records, the Resignation of DNI Tulsi Gabbard, and the Pattern of Institutional Obstruction by the Central Intelligence Agency and Its Auxiliary Press
\nCLASSIFICATION:<\/strong>\u00a0Open-Source Investigative Memorandum — For Distribution<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n

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\"\ud83d\udcd1\"EXECUTIVE SUMMARY — PRIMARY FINDINGS<\/u><\/u><\/h2>\n

This Memorandum addresses the explosive May 2026 disclosure by CIA operations officer James E. Erdman III that the Central Intelligence Agency repossessed forty (40) boxes of John F. Kennedy assassination records and Project MKULTRA records from the declassification pipeline of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (the “ODNI”), and the resignation nine days later of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. The principal findings supported by the evidence and reasoning developed in the body of this Memorandum are as follows:<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Finding 1.<\/strong>\u00a0A senior CIA operations officer, James E. Erdman III, gave sworn testimony to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on May 13, 2026, that after the shutdown of Gabbard’s Director’s Initiatives Group (the “DIG”) in April 2026, the CIA “took back” approximately forty boxes of JFK assassination and MKULTRA records that ODNI was processing for declassification under Executive Order 14176, and further alleged that the Agency had illegally monitored DIG personnel’s communications during the year preceding. See<\/i> Senate HSGAC letter and testimony packet, available at\u00a0https:\/\/www.hsgac.senate.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/letter-and-testimomy.pdf<\/a>.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Finding 2.<\/strong>\u00a0The disclosure by Officer Erdman is corroborated by the prior public record, including the November 25, 2025 Reuters exclusive describing the April 2025 ODNI “hunters” operation that forcibly extracted assassination records from a clandestine CIA archival facility. See<\/i> Phil Stewart and Jonathan Landay, Reuters, available at\u00a0https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/us\/how-gabbards-hunters-pounced-secret-cia-warehouse-kennedy-files-2025-11-25\/<\/a>. This establishes that an interagency\u00a0custody war<\/em>\u00a0over politically explosive historical records preceded the publicly reported “raid” controversy by more than a year.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Finding 3.<\/strong>\u00a0The mainstream press response, and particularly the rapid amplification followed by the equally rapid retraction of Fox News’ “CIA raids Tulsi’s office” framing, operated as a textbook\u00a0limited hangout \/ strawman correction<\/em>\u00a0maneuver. By focusing public debate on whether agents had physically raided Gabbard’s personal office (which no serious witness ever claimed), the press dispatched the entire substantive controversy without ever addressing Officer Erdman’s actual sworn allegations. Compare\u00a0The Hill<\/em>, available at\u00a0https:\/\/thehill.com\/homenews\/administration\/5877734-tulsi-gabbard-odni-office-fbi-raid-reporting\/<\/a>, with ODNI spokeswoman Olivia Coleman’s narrow denial at\u00a0https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/dni-denies-cia-tulsi-gabbard-raid-11949426<\/a>.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Finding 4.<\/strong>\u00a0Director Gabbard’s stated reason for resignation, her husband Abraham Williams’s diagnosis with a rare bone cancer, is credible on its face and unchallenged in the public record. See<\/i> PBS at\u00a0https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/newshour\/politics\/read-tulsi-gabbards-full-resignation-letter-as-director-of-national-intelligence<\/a>; Fox News at\u00a0https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/politics\/exclusive-tulsi-gabbard-resigns-from-trump-cabinet<\/a>. However, the official reason coexists with, and conveniently provides honorable cover for, a documented year-long pattern of CIA obstruction, White House friction over the Iran war, the protest resignations of her closest counterterrorism aide Joe Kent on March 17, 2026 (see<\/i> BBC at\u00a0https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/cg4g66r3z40o<\/a>) and Deputy DNI Amaryllis Fox Kennedy on May 19, 2026 (see<\/i>\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>\u00a0at\u00a0https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/national-security\/2026\/05\/19\/top-intelligence-official-amaryllis-fox-kennedy-gabbard-ally-resigns\/<\/a>), and Reuters’ simultaneous reporting that the White House had in fact\u00a0forced<\/em>\u00a0her out, available at\u00a0https:\/\/www.usnews.com\/news\/world\/articles\/2026-05-22\/white-house-forced-top-spy-gabbard-to-resign-source-says<\/a>.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Finding 5.<\/strong>\u00a0The MKULTRA dimension is the single most evidentiarily significant aspect of Officer Erdman’s disclosure. CIA Director Richard Helms ordered the destruction of MKULTRA operational files in January 1973; the publicly available record consists almost entirely of the Inouye-Schweiker “financial records” discovered in 1977. If forty boxes of MKULTRA-related material existed in late 2025 in any form processable for declassification, that fact alone contradicts a half-century of sworn CIA representations to Congress and the public. See<\/i> National Security Archive at\u00a0https:\/\/nsarchive.gwu.edu\/briefing-book\/dnsa-intelligence\/2024-12-23\/cia-behavior-control-experiments-focus-new-scholarly<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0https:\/\/nsarchive.gwu.edu\/briefing-book\/dnsa-intelligence\/2025-10-30\/top-secret-testimony-cias-mkultra-chief-50-years-later<\/a>.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Finding 6.<\/strong>\u00a0The conduct of the CIA in this episode is structurally indistinguishable from the conduct that G. Robert Blakey condemned on his deathbed. CIA officer George Joannides was deployed in 1978 to act as liaison to the House Select Committee on Assassinations while concealing his own 1963 operational role with the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil, the very organization whose contacts with Lee Harvey Oswald the HSCA was investigating. Blakey: “The agency set me up. … I no longer believe anything the Agency told me.” The 2026 episode, in which a CIA officer (Erdman) detailed to a presidentially mandated declassification task force testifies that career CIA elements monitored, obstructed, and ultimately clawed back the very records the task force was created to disclose, repeats the Joannides pattern at a higher level of institutional brazenness.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Finding 7.<\/strong>\u00a0Within the serious JFK research community, the early skepticism voiced by Russ Baker (relaying Jefferson Morley) that the forty boxes “were actually empty,” and Charles Drago’s “plot device” hypothesis positing that Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s elevation may itself be a managed operation, are not refutations of the underlying allegation but rather\u00a0additional grounds for suspicion<\/em>. If the boxes were empty, then the question becomes who emptied them, when, and under what authority; if they were full but contain only “limited hangout” chaff, that too is significant. The Agency’s history affords no benign explanation that fits the facts.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Finding 8.<\/strong>\u00a0The most defensible interpretation of the totality of the evidence is that Director Gabbard’s resignation cannot be reduced to any single cause. The personal explanation is true. The Iran-policy friction is true. The CIA’s institutional war against the DIG and its declassification mandate is also true. These causes are not in competition; they are concentric. The CIA-coup interpretation advanced by Rep. Luna, Senator Mike Lee, Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, and Paul Dragu (The New American<\/em>, available at\u00a0https:\/\/thenewamerican.com\/us\/politics\/cia-strikes-again-agency-seizes-boxes-of-jfk-and-mk-ultra-files\/<\/a>) overstates the evidence on direct causation but accurately identifies the structural mechanism by which the position of any DNI committed to genuine assassination-records transparency becomes, and is\u00a0made<\/em>, untenable.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Finding 9.<\/strong>\u00a0Mainstream coverage of this episode, and particularly that of Reuters, CNN, the BBC, NBC, and\u00a0Mother Jones<\/em>, has uniformly subordinated the substantive Erdman allegations to the narrative of right-wing conspiracism, performing the same propagandistic service the establishment press performed during the Warren Commission, Garrison investigation, House Select Committee, and Assassination Records Review Board eras. The pattern is by now so consistent that it is itself evidence.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Finding 10.<\/strong>\u00a0Senator Ron Johnson’s open call for a new Church Committee, and Senator Rand Paul’s disclosure that the\u00a0unredacted<\/em>\u00a0original 1976 Church Committee report has been withheld from him for two years by the CIA, together constitute the most significant institutional crisis of intelligence-community oversight since 1975. The research community should treat this moment as exactly that.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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\"\ud83d\uddc3\ufe0f\"I. PROCEDURAL POSTURE AND SOURCES OF EVIDENCE<\/u><\/u><\/h2>\n

The events analyzed in this Memorandum unfolded across a thirteen-month period from January 23, 2025 (the signing of Executive Order 14176) through May 22, 2026 (Director Gabbard’s resignation), with the most acute phase occurring between May 13, 2026 (the Senate hearing) and May 22, 2026 (the resignation). The evidentiary record consists of the following: first, the primary sworn testimony of Officer Erdman as transmitted in the Senate HSGAC letter packet, available at\u00a0https:\/\/www.hsgac.senate.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/letter-and-testimomy.pdf<\/a>; second, the contemporaneous Senate hearing transcript, available at\u00a0https:\/\/www.rev.com\/transcripts\/covid-19-whistleblower-hearing<\/a>; third, the Reuters investigative reporting of Phil Stewart and Jonathan Landay, available at\u00a0https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/us\/how-gabbards-hunters-pounced-secret-cia-warehouse-kennedy-files-2025-11-25\/<\/a>; fourth, Executive Order 14176, available at\u00a0https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/presidential-actions\/2025\/01\/declassification-of-records-concerning-the-assassinations-of-president-john-f-kennedy\/<\/a>; fifth, ODNI’s own press releases on the establishment and activities of the DIG, available at\u00a0https:\/\/www.dni.gov\/index.php\/newsroom\/press-releases\/press-releases-2025\/4063-pr-05-25<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0https:\/\/www.dni.gov\/index.php\/newsroom\/press-releases\/press-releases-2025\/4066-pr-06-25<\/a>; sixth, Director Gabbard’s resignation letter, available at\u00a0https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/newshour\/politics\/read-tulsi-gabbards-full-resignation-letter-as-director-of-national-intelligence<\/a>; seventh, the contemporary independent reporting of Jefferson Morley and Jack Reid at JFK Facts, available at\u00a0https:\/\/jfkfacts.substack.com\/p\/cia-officer-agency-defies-trumps<\/a>; and eighth, the discussion record at the Education Forum, particularly the thread initiated by Robert Reeves on May 14, 2026 and the related “Hunters” thread initiated by Lawrence Schnapf on November 28, 2025, available at\u00a0https:\/\/educationforum.ipbhost.com\/topic\/31860-how-gabbards-hunters-pounced-on-a-secret-cis-warehouse-for-kennedy-files\/<\/a>.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n

The reader should be aware that I have personally verified each material claim in this Memorandum against at least two independent sources, and have given less weight to single-sourced allegations even when those allegations are consistent with the broader evidentiary pattern. Where a claim rests on a single source, that fact is identified in the body of the Memorandum.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n

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\"\ud83d\udcc5\"II. RECONSTRUCTED TIMELINE<\/u><\/u><\/h2>\n

The following table sets forth the verified sequence of events relevant to this Memorandum. Each entry is supported by a citation either in the table or in the body that follows.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
No.<\/b><\/u><\/u><\/b><\/td>\nDate<\/b><\/u><\/u><\/b><\/td>\nEvent<\/b><\/u><\/u><\/b><\/td>\nPrimary Source<\/b><\/u><\/u><\/b><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
1<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nJan. 23, 2025<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nTrump signs EO 14176, ordering full declassification of JFK\/RFK\/MLK assassination records; ODNI designated as lead coordinator<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nwhitehouse.gov<\/a><\/u><\/u><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nMar. 18, 2025<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nNARA releases approximately 80,000 pages of JFK records pursuant to EO 14176<\/u><\/u><\/td>\narchives.gov<\/a><\/u><\/u><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
3<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nApr. 8, 2025<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nGabbard formally establishes the Director’s Initiatives Group (DIG) within ODNI<\/u><\/u><\/td>\ndni.gov<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Washington Post<\/a><\/u><\/u><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
4<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nApr. 2025<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nODNI “hunters” team, led by DIA’s Paul Allen McDonald II and including Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, arrives unannounced at clandestine CIA archival facility and extracts JFK\/RFK\/MLK records for transfer to NARA<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nReuters<\/a><\/u><\/u><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
5<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nApr. 10, 2025<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nAt Cabinet meeting, Gabbard publicly describes her teams as “hunters” sent to scour CIA and FBI archives<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nReuters (same source)<\/u><\/u><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
6<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nMar. 30, 2026<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nTrump publicly states Gabbard is “softer than him” on Iran nuclear issue<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nReuters<\/a><\/u><\/u><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
7<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nMar. 17, 2026<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nNCTC Director Joe Kent resigns in protest over Iran war<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nBBC<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Axios<\/a><\/u><\/u><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
8<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nApr. 2026<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nDIG is wound down; Officer Erdman reassigned back to CIA; CIA simultaneously “takes back” approximately 40 boxes of JFK\/MKULTRA records<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nReuters<\/a>\u00a0and Erdman testimony<\/u><\/u><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
9<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nMay 5, 2026<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nSenate HSGAC subpoenas Erdman<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nRev transcript<\/a><\/u><\/u><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
10<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nMay 13, 2026<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nErdman testifies publicly to Senate HSGAC; discloses the 40-box repossession and DIG surveillance; Senator Ron Johnson calls for new Church Committee<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nHSGAC packet<\/a><\/u><\/u><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
11<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nMay 13-14, 2026<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nRep. Anna Paulina Luna issues preservation notice and threatens subpoena to CIA Director Ratcliffe<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nNewsNation<\/a><\/u><\/u><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
12<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nMay 13-14, 2026<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nFox News’ Jesse Watters airs “CIA Raids Tulsi’s Office” segment; ODNI spokeswoman Olivia Coleman denies the framing; clip deleted<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nThe Hill<\/a><\/u><\/u><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
13<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nMay 19, 2026<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nDeputy DNI Amaryllis Fox Kennedy resigns from two of three ODNI\/IC posts<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nWashington Post<\/a><\/u><\/u><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
14<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nMay 22, 2026<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nGabbard submits resignation, effective June 30, 2026; Reuters separately reports that the White House forced her out<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nFox News<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Reuters\/USNews<\/a><\/u><\/u><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
15<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nMay 22, 2026<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nTrump names Principal Deputy DNI Aaron Lukas as Acting DNI<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nNPR<\/a><\/u><\/u><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
16<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nMay 23, 2026<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nRFK Jr. publicly blasts CIA for “seizing” his uncle’s assassination records<\/u><\/u><\/td>\nNY Post<\/a><\/u><\/u><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
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\"\ud83d\uddbc\ufe0f\"<\/b>[<\/b><\/b>EXHIBIT A — TIMELINE INFOGRAPHIC]<\/b><\/b><\/u><\/u><\/b><\/p>\n

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\"\ud83d\udcdc\"III. THE PRIMARY EVIDENTIARY DOCUMENT: ERDMAN’S TESTIMONY<\/u><\/u><\/h2>\n

The single most important document in this entire matter is the May 14, 2026 letter from Chairman Rand Paul to CIA Director John Ratcliffe, attaching James E. Erdman III’s prepared written statement, available at\u00a0https:\/\/www.hsgac.senate.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/letter-and-testimomy.pdf<\/a>. The key allegations in that document, in Erdman’s own words as transmitted by the Committee, are as follows:<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n

“After the DIG shutdown … the CIA took back 40 boxes of documents being processed for declassification. They were JFK assassination files … They also took back MKULTRA files the DNI was going to process for possible declassification.”<\/u><\/u><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And further:<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n

The CIA “illegally monitored the computer and phone activity of DIG personnel, including their contacts with whistleblowers, while they were carrying out executive orders signed by the President.”<\/u><\/u><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Three features of this testimony are dispositive for present purposes.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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First<\/em>, Erdman is a serving CIA operations officer testifying under subpoena. He is not a partisan operative, a journalist, or an outside critic. He is a member of the institution he is accusing, testifying against its institutional interest, under penalty of perjury. The Agency itself has not denied that he made these statements; it has objected to the\u00a0process<\/em>\u00a0by which his testimony was taken. See<\/i>\u00a0https:\/\/thenewamerican.com\/us\/politics\/cia-strikes-again-agency-seizes-boxes-of-jfk-and-mk-ultra-files\/<\/a>, citing the CIA’s procedural objection rather than substantive denial. This is a tell.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Second<\/em>, the allegations are\u00a0factually specific<\/em>: a particular number of boxes (40), a particular subject matter (JFK and MKULTRA), a particular temporal trigger (the DIG shutdown), and a particular custodial sequence (ODNI processing to CIA repossession). Vague allegations are easy to deny; specific allegations require the denying party to engage the facts. The CIA has not engaged the facts.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Third<\/em>, the surveillance allegation, namely that the CIA monitored DIG personnel’s communications including communications with whistleblowers, is a felony allegation. If true, it constitutes a violation of 50 U.S.C. Section 3033 (protections for intelligence-community whistleblowers) and, depending on the means of surveillance, potentially 18 U.S.C. Sections 2511 and 1030. The mainstream press has not pursued this aspect of the testimony at all.\"\u26a0\ufe0f\"<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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<\/b>\"\ud83d\udcc4\"<\/b>\u00a0[EXHIBIT B — SENATE HSGAC LETTER AND TESTIMONY PACKET]<\/b><\/u><\/u><\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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https:\/\/www.hsgac.senate.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/letter-and-testimomy.pdf<\/a><\/u><\/u><\/u><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"\ud83c\udfdb\ufe0f\"IV. THE STRUCTURAL CONTEXT: EO 14176, THE DIG, AND THE “HUNTERS” OPERATION<\/u><\/u><\/h2>\n

To understand why Erdman’s testimony detonated as it did, one must understand the structural conflict the Trump Administration created on January 23, 2025 when it signed Executive Order 14176. The EO directed the DNI and the Attorney General to produce, within fifteen days, a plan for the “full and complete release” of records concerning the assassinations of President Kennedy, Senator Kennedy, and Dr. King. See<\/i>\u00a0https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/presidential-actions\/2025\/01\/declassification-of-records-concerning-the-assassinations-of-president-john-f-kennedy\/<\/a>. The EO, by its terms, vested operational authority in the DNI, not the CIA, to direct the declassification process. The Agency, which had been the principal institutional obstacle to full disclosure for sixty-two years, was thereby placed in the position of subordinate.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n

On April 8, 2025, Director Gabbard formalized this inversion by standing up the Director’s Initiatives Group (the “DIG”). See<\/i>\u00a0https:\/\/www.dni.gov\/index.php\/newsroom\/press-releases\/press-releases-2025\/4063-pr-05-25<\/a>. The DIG’s mission, as announced, was to “restore transparency and accountability” within the intelligence community and to execute the President’s declassification mandate. Critically, the DIG was a\u00a0cross-agency<\/em>\u00a0body: it included personnel detailed from the CIA, DIA, and other components, including Officer Erdman. This staffing model is what placed Erdman in a position to witness, and later testify to, what the Agency did when it perceived its archival sovereignty under threat.<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n

Then came the April 2025 “Hunters” operation. Reuters’ Phil Stewart and Jonathan Landay reported on November 25, 2025, six months before the Erdman testimony, that an ODNI team led by DIA official Paul Allen McDonald II, and including former undercover CIA operative Amaryllis Fox Kennedy (RFK Jr.’s daughter-in-law), arrived\u00a0unannounced<\/em>\u00a0at a clandestine CIA archival facility in the Washington area to seize still-classified JFK, RFK, and MLK files for transfer to the National Archives. See<\/i>\u00a0https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/us\/how-gabbards-hunters-pounced-secret-cia-warehouse-kennedy-files-2025-11-25\/<\/a>. Reuters reported shouting at the entryway and a transfer to NARA completed at 2:00 a.m. the following morning. At an April 10, 2025 Cabinet meeting, Gabbard described her teams to the President as “hunters” sent to “scour archives at the CIA and FBI for materials.”<\/u><\/u><\/p>\n

This is the operation the alternative press later mischaracterized as the\u00a0opposite-direction<\/em>\u00a0“CIA raid on Gabbard’s office.” It was, in fact, an\u00a0ODNI raid<\/em>, under direct presidential authority, on the\u00a0CIA<\/em>. And it humiliated the Agency.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…the Resignation of DNI Tulsi Gabbard, and the Pattern of Institutional Obstruction by the Central Intelligence Agency and Its Auxiliary Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65521"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65616,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65521\/revisions\/65616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}