Luna threatens subpoena after whistleblower says CIA seized JFK and MKUltra files

Luna said the documents had been requested by Congress and that if they were not returned, she would introduce a motion to subpoena them. 

Rep. James Comer (R-KY), who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Luna issued a letter to CIA Director John Ratcliffe requesting that all documents relating to the JFK assassination and the controversial MKUltra experiment be preserved.

Luna had previously announced that the House oversight committee would be holding a hearing on MKUltra.

Luna later corrected herself, saying the raid did not happen on Wednesday but that that was the time at which she and her colleagues found out about it. She added that ODNI had jurisdiction over the documents. 

CIA officials allegedly took the documents from the National Reconnaissance Office last year during the government shutdown, and they have not been back in ODNI’s possession since, NewsNation’s Katie Pavlich reported. 

MKUltra was a secret CIA program that ran from the 1950s to 1970s that experimented with mind control, behavior modification, and interrogation techniques, sometimes using drugs such as LSD on unwitting subjects. Many files were destroyed in 1973, but thousands of surviving CIA documents were later released through congressional investigation in the 1970s and afterward. 

Luna said in an interview with Pavlich that the files taken from Gabbard’s office relating to MKUltra “apparently never existed.” 

CIA spokeswoman Liz Lyons released a statement following Erdman’s testimony, saying he was “not appearing as a whistleblower in pursuit of the truth” but rather in response to a subpoena to discuss Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former White House COVID-19 adviser, pushing the national security community into publicly saying the COVID-19 pandemic had a natural origin instead of coming from a lab leak.

“This proceeding amounts to nothing more than dishonest political theater masquerading as a congressional hearing,” Lyons said, signaling a fracture in the agency’s willingness to comply with congressional subpoenas.

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) responded to Luna’s threat in an X post, supporting the congresswoman in her venture to subpoena the CIA. 

“The CIA lied about MK Ultra existing,” Burchett said. “They were sued and were forced to admit it but say they aren’t doing it now. Which lie do you believe? Subpoena and preserve these documents now.”