WHILE HE WAS IN BEIJING

The CIA Story That Broke While Everyone Was Watching Trump In China

By Brian Bullock

While the world watched Donald Trump shake hands with Xi Jinping in Beijing, an entirely different fight was unfolding in Washington. A CIA whistleblower stood before the Senate Homeland Security Committee and told them under oath that the CIA had taken back 40 boxes of files. The boxes contained JFK assassination records and MKUltra documents that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence had been processing for declassification under a direct executive order from the President.

The committee was supposed to be talking about classified document oversight. Instead they heard testimony that the CIA was running its own counter-program against the agency that oversees it.

This is the story most Americans missed.

How It Started

On Wednesday, May 13, James Erdman III testified before the Senate Homeland Security Committee. Erdman is not a partisan blogger or a podcast guest. He is a senior CIA operations officer who had recently completed a joint-duty assignment with the ODNI Director Initiatives Group. He worked inside the office of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. He came back to testify about what he saw there.

His core allegation was specific. The CIA, he said, had taken back roughly 40 boxes of files that DNI Gabbard's office was processing for declassification. The files related to the JFK assassination and the MKUltra program. He described it as a documented effort to circumvent oversight.