Inside the Langley showdown over JFK and MK-Ultra secrets
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.
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.”
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).
The Jack Smith Operation Shows Lawfare Will Only Get Worse
Conservatives have yet to build the institutions, infrastructure, and legal capacity needed to counter lawfare before it destroys more lives.Bill Clinton was 'scared and mad’ after CIA scrapped bin Laden operation: 'Do your job'
Former President Bill Clinton is spilling the tea on one of the biggest missed opportunities in the years before 9/11.
In a recent interview, Clinton said he had authorized the CIA to target Osama bin Laden but that the agency ultimately abandoned the operation because officials feared a failed mission could kill innocent civilians.
Clinton explained their reasoning during a radio interview with WABC’s "Cats Roundtable" and told the hosts that he “immediately” knew who was behind the terror attacks while watching them unfold.
He also reportedly said that he had “authorized the CIA to try to take him out.”
“I was scared, and I was mad because we tried to get him before, and the CIA at the last minute killed the plan that I think might well have succeeded,” Clinton said.
BlazeTV host Pat Gray isn’t buying it.
“I’m just looking now for my copy of the 1998 Constitution where it says, ‘The CIA is the commander in chief of the United States,’” he says.
“No ... that copy of the Constitution was written in November, roughly about the 22nd or so of 1963,” executive producer Keith Malinak chimes in, referencing the grisly assassination of JFK.
“So we do know that the CIA is the commander in chief, and they have the final word on that,” Gray says, though he still believes “the president of the United States is responsible.”
“Whether it’s George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, whoever the president is, you’re the commander in chief, you make the decision,” he says.
“And if you felt like he should be taken out, take him out. Have the giblets to just do your job,” he adds.
Want more from Pat Gray?
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The cartels are learning drone warfare from Ukraine
Last summer, European news outlets reported that “volunteers” from Mexican and Colombian drug cartels had infiltrated Ukraine’s military — considered the world’s “drone superpower” — to learn cutting-edge drone warfare so they could use the knowledge to kill their enemies back home.
Claims that this problem is ongoing have not yet been publicly verified by the U.S. intelligence community or the media. As yet, however, they remain undisputed. They now demand further scrutiny and broader attention in the United States to prompt appropriate action. If it’s not too late, and if the reports are correct, the U.S. urgently needs to terminate this knowledge transfer from Ukrainian soldiers to Latin America’s crime lords.
'The drone industry has exploded, and criminals have adapted the technology for attacks, which is a major challenge to battlefield aerial supremacy.'
American military, law enforcement, and intelligence personnel are deployed for clandestine work inside and around Mexico and Colombia, working to eradicate the very same criminal organizations now siphoning drone expertise from Ukraine.
This means that top-of-the-line, battlefield-proven tech and tactics could empower vengeful cartel murderers to do to U.S. ground personnel what the Ukrainian army claims it did to 30,000 Russian soldiers in July alone.
One might hope that, after the problem was made public in 2025, Ukraine quickly moved to clear out all cartel infiltrators. One would be sadly disappointed. TheFinancial Times reported that Ukraine has discovered yet more Colombians with organized crime connections in-country, demonstrating “unusual obsessions” about battlefield drone fighting. The exfiltration problem persists.
“Former paramilitaries, former guerrillas, and former soldiers are fighting and learning together here how to operate drones,” a Colombian aid worker in Ukraine told the Financial Times for the August 6 story. U.S. outlets, meanwhile, are largely sitting this one out so far.
U.S. lawmakers should note the bitter irony that the drone warfare knowledge America’s enemies are stealing was funded by some of the $70 billion in U.S. taxpayer money appropriated to Ukraine. Then they should use that as leverage: There are tens of billions more dollars in the pipeline, which should be withheld until the gang operatives are purged.
What we think we know
On July 30, 2025, the French website Intelligence Online first reported that Ukraine’s Security Service launched an investigation after Mexico’s National Intelligence Center warned that Mexican cartel fighters had infiltrated Spanish-speaking units of the International Legion.
Their alleged intention was to learn how to fly first-person view drones, gather ideas for drone-attack tech, and study battlefield tactics that Ukraine’s armed forces have famously used to stall Russia’s invasion.
Foreign outlets keep turning up new information. Poland and Bulgaria have begun their own investigations into smuggling pipelines through their territories. Granular details seem to bolster the reports. For instance, some volunteers already accomplished in drone fighting have joined the legion’s specialized tactical intelligence combat unit, known as “Ethos,” in the combat-heavy Donetsk and Kharkiv regions, according to the reports.
Polish officials reportedly revealed that private Mexican and Colombian security companies with alleged ties to drug trafficking networks financed and smuggled the volunteers into Ukraine through neighboring countries. One Colombian security firm based in Cali and Medellín reportedly recruited former Colombian Army rangers.
One smuggled Mexican legion volunteer, operating under the alias “Aguila-7,” registered in March 2024 using fraudulent Salvadoran documentation. He proved so technically proficient during drone training in Lviv that instructors called for an investigation, which later found probable connections to Mexico’s elite GAFE air-mobile special forces. Former GAFE personnel have joined cartels, the reports said.
RELATED: The Navy has a choice: Get better or become less relevant
Why it matters
The infiltrations coincide with President Trump’s day-one declaration of a U.S. war to eradicate the cartels, designating many as foreign terrorist organizations. If cartel leaders are out to avenge what they have suffered, their drones can find many more targetable American personnel.
No one should have been surprised, for instance, when two CIA officers died this past April in a Chihuahua State car accident while traveling with Mexican forces after a drug lab raid. They were present because Trump has surged military and CIA personnel into Mexico and Latin America, as well as naval and aircraft assets for lethal boat bombing operations that have killed hundreds of drug smugglers. The operations have included supposed CIA-facilitated assassinations in Mexico.
An “Americas Counter Cartel Coalition” of 19 Latin American countries is heavily reliant on local national security forces within which U.S. intelligence community operatives are embedded. Additionally, some 9,000 U.S. military personnel are stationed along 845 miles of the U.S. southern border in expanding “National Defense Areas” intended to deny cartel drug-load entries along with illegal immigration. By many accounts, gangs in Colombia and Mexico are angry about the resulting killings, drug lab raids, boat bombings, profit disruptions, and imprisonments on U.S. terrorism charges.
By now, we would know if the cartels were killing more American personnel. They are not, likely deterred by the knowledge that crossing such a bright line would incur even more painful American wrath. But are the cartels building that capacity to get Trump off their backs in due time?
Before any reporting about cartels in Ukraine, Mexico’s cartels were already using sloppily repurposed commercial drones to drop grenades and explosives on rivals and indigenous security forces. That’s still happening in Mexico and Colombia, including the first recent attacks by FPV drones. In October 2025, a coordinated three-drone FPV attack hit the state prosecutor’s office in the Mexican border city of Tijuana, destroying six vehicles a mile from the U.S. border.
Senior Colombian officials told the outlet they are already seeing Ukraine-style first-person-view drones in recent widespread use. However, a Colombian drone pilot in Ukraine told the Financial Times that pilots still hadn’t mastered how to replicate some technology or set explosive charges.
“The drone industry has exploded, and criminals have adapted the technology for attacks, which is a major challenge to battlefield aerial supremacy,” Colombian Defense Minister Pedro Sánchez told the newspaper.
What to do now
Ukraine-style drone attacks against Americans in Mexico or Colombia could upend U.S. counter-cartel initiatives tactically and politically. Body bags returning home are a tragedy. But they also have a way of undermining public support in any war. Tactics and strategic trajectories change as a result. Just ask Moscow.
To head off this shameful outcome, the White House must forcefully leverage direct U.S. military aid to have Kyiv immediately remove cartel operatives from its formations, subject to direct verification by American investigators.
Next, the U.S. must speed up and diversify current efforts to counter the emerging drone threat along the border and to help foreign allied governments protect embedded U.S. personnel. The U.S. should do what it can to intercept drone equipment and technology imports into Latin America. And leadership should make sure American soldiers and operatives posted abroad burrow deeper out of sight.
In the meantime, if anyone wonders whether the U.S. might actually redouble its efforts if the cartels kill any Americans, the Trump administration should loudly message that they had better believe we will.
Editor's note: This article was originally published in the American Mind.
Laughter Of Recognition Echoes From The Realest Spy Novel In Years
Sam R. OYKEN's 'The Pickle Factory,' is a wildly original, very funny, and sadly accurate satire of the CIA.Charlie Kirk’s Murder ‘Has Turned Into Infotainment … Instead Of A Spiritual Revival’
'More people are realizing they are being lied to, not by the government or TurningPoint, but by people desperate for clicks and revenue.'No slaughter for the CIA's DEI office — yet
President Trump won the 2024 election promising to gut Biden-era DEI across the federal government, calling it "illegal and immoral." The CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence tried to do exactly that — moving to fire 19 career officers who had spent their time on diversity, equity, and inclusion assignments instead of actual intelligence work.
Two Democrat-appointed judges said not so fast.
'As long as the employee subject to termination chooses to pursue reassignment, the agencies must attempt to reassign her.'
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 Thursday that the CIA and ODNI have to let the 19 DEI-linked officers appeal their firings and, in some cases, apply for reassignment before they can be shown the door, the Washington Times reported.
The panel found the agencies skipped procedural steps required for a reduction in force — a technicality that's now kept the firings frozen for well over a year, according to Bloomberg Government.
Writing for the majority, Biden-appointee Judge Nicole Berner — joined by Obama-appointee Judge Stephanie Thacker — ruled the officers had enough of a claim to their jobs to sue in the first place.
Berner wrote: "As long as the employee subject to termination chooses to pursue reassignment, the agencies must attempt to reassign her."
RELATED: 'BIG WIN': Trump calls SCOTUS 'Slaughter' ruling the greatest increase of presidential power in 100 years
In a blistering dissent, Judge Paul Niemeyer, a George H.W. Bush appointee, argued that Congress gave intelligence directors "unfettered discretion" to fire employees precisely so courts couldn't micromanage personnel decisions at agencies handling national security.
He called the injunction unlawful and urged the Supreme Court to step in, calling it a serious separation-of-powers problem: judges telling the CIA how to run its own house.
The ruling lands days after the Supreme Court handed Trump a win affirming his broad authority to fire employees, with a separate case providing a narrow carve-out for officials like Federal Reserve board members.
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