On May 13, 2026, CIA senior operations officer James Erdman III appeared under subpoena before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. He was testifying despite his agency's objections.

Erdman had recently led an investigation for Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s “Director’s Initiatives Group” into COVID-19 origins, anomalous health incidents, and UFOs. What he told the senators was explosive.

‘We just want to clear the air. We did not take back documents.’

"Dr. Fauci's role in the cover-up was intentional," Erdman testified. He said Fauci had steered the intelligence community's COVID-origins analysis by supplying “a conflicted list of curated subject matter experts,” several of whom co-wrote the paper dismissing the lab-leak theory.

Inside the CIA, Erdman said, six of the seven technical experts involved in a COVID relook favored a lab-leak conclusion. Management changed the assessment anyway in what he called a "middle-of-the-night anonymous rewrite."

Then came the allegation that set House members on fire.

"The CIA illegally monitored the computer and phone usage of DIG personnel, their investigations, and contact with whistleblowers," Erdman said. "When the DIG ceased operations, the CIA took back 40 boxes of JFK and MK-Ultra files being processed for declassification by DNI Gabbard."

Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) read aloud a statement the CIA had just released calling the hearing "dishonest political theater." Then he turned to Erdman. "I have years and years and years of built-up frustration of agencies like the CIA, Department of Justice, the FBI, HHS, snubbing our oversight, giving us the big middle finger," Johnson said.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), chairwoman of the House declassification task force, called the episode “an internal coup.” She and Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) took to social media demanding that the files be returned. Within a day, the CIA invited them to headquarters.

On May 14, Burlison and Luna stood before the Memorial Wall at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, its 141 stars carved into white marble for officers who died in the line of duty.

They had surrendered their phones. No aides were allowed, no notepads, no recording devices. If anyone later disputed what was said, there would be no way to prove it.

They were led up an elevator to the top floor and through narrow, winding hallways. Burlison was struck by how ordinary it felt: a sterile cubicle farm straight out of a “Dilbert” cartoon.

The meeting was supposed to be with CIA Director John Ratcliffe. Instead, they were met by the agency's archivist, a woman in her late 50s who oversaw two football fields' worth of paper files.

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Ratcliffe, they were told, was “out of pocket.” They later learned he was in Cuba.

“We just want to clear the air,” the archivist began. “We did not take back documents.”

In the CIA's telling, when President Trump ordered the JFK records released, Gabbard's team showed up unannounced and demanded them. The CIA objected to the files leaving in the team's personal cars and insisted on moving them in its own secure vans.

About 300 boxes were handed over, the CIA said, while 42 were at another location being processed. When those were ready, according to the agency, it notified the DNI's office.

Burlison saw the irony. The CIA was telling the office that oversees it that it could not be trusted with the files.

“You do recognize that there's a point of friction between the CIA and the ODNI,” he told them, “and there's a reason ODNI came in without informing you that they were coming? There’s clearly a level of mistrust between the two organizations.”

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They acknowledged it. They also agreed that the CIA spokesperson’s public attacks were unacceptable.

“The way they conducted themselves in the meeting was almost like they were a kid caught doing something wrong,” Burlison told me afterward, "and were profusely apologetic, and desperately trying to figure out, 'How do we de-escalate the situation?'"

Burlison left without a clear answer about what was in those 42 boxes or whether the CIA had pulled them before Gabbard's team could review them. The CIA also said there were 11 more boxes the DNI would never be allowed to see because they contained tradecraft secrets.

He wasn't interested in de-escalating.

Two and a half months later, Luna told me the CIA had located the files and placed them in line for declassification.

But it took a whistleblower defying his own agency, a Senate subpoena, and two members of Congress walking into Langley to get there.

If the task force doesn't survive November, who will make that walk next time?

Editor’s note: This article is excerpted from “Book of Secrets: Congress Tries to Find the Truth About the Deep State,” by Kent Heckenlively (Permuted Press).