Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. took aim at the CIA this week, blasting the agency for reportedly keeping a tranche of his uncle’s assassination records under wraps for a “sinister” reason he could neither identify or justify.
The Health and Human Services secretary spoke to The Post days after the CIA seized boxes of secret JFK documents from the office of outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, prompting furious outcry from influential House Republicans.
“This is yet another inexplicable move by the CIA that it’s hard to put a face on it that’s not sinister – because it’s illegal,” RFK told The Post in Iowa where he was promoting Make America Healthy Again legislation.
“I mean, the JFK assassination document act said they had to release all of that stuff,” he continued, referencing the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which set a final records release date of 2025. President Trump signed an executive order days after retaking office calling for an end to the “endless delays” in the release.
He came up empty when asked for the reasons behind the CIA’s decades-long resistance to document releases.
“I don’t know. I mean, obviously, there’s something that they feel like that they don’t want the public to read,” he said. “It’s very strange.”
Kennedy Jr., 72, endorsed a new push by House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) to try to get the agency to cough up any relevant material.
“I’m grateful to them for doing that,” he said. “I don’t even know if you need Congress, but I’m glad that Congress responded,” he said.
A CIA spokesperson challenged any claim that it withheld or took material from the DNI during its declassification review.
“ODNI has acknowledged in writing they made a mistake saying that boxes were seized and then were again mistaken in saying there were ever any boxes either missing or not made available. ODNI has acknowledged all boxes have been made available to them for more than a year,” a CIA spokesperson told The Post.
RFK Jr’s comments come after The Post reported in February on the legal effort to force the government to reveal what it knows about 8mm assassination footage shot by Dallas A/C repairman Orville Nix.
Former CIA officer James Erdman delivered bombshell whistleblower testimony before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs last week that the CIA took 40 boxes of assassination records from Gabbard’s office that he said were “being processed for declassification.”
Erdman said they included documents from the CIA’s previously secret MK-Ultra program, which dates to the 1950s-1970s — when the agency performed experiments on mind control and human behavior modification.
RFK Jr. told a podcaster in 2024 that the CIA “was directly involved in my uncle’s assassination, and in the 60-year cover-up,” while speaking about MK-Ultra.
“The ‘MK’ stands for mind control, and the CIA had these programs at Fort Detrick [Army labs in Maryland], but at 220 universities around our country,” he told the Shawn Ryan show in 2024. His office didn’t say if his most recent comments had to do with MK-Ultra.
Luna visited CIA headquarters at Langley last week, the agency confirmed, after she issued stern posts on X about the assassination records.
“The CIA has 24 hours to return the documents to Tulsi Gabbard’s office or else I will make a motion to issue a subpoena,” she posted May 13. Luna and Comer then wrote CIA Director John Ratcliffe telling him to preserve assassination and MK-Ultra records.
CIA spokeswoman Liz Lyons accused the Senate panel of acting in “bad faith” by subpoenaing the witness without telling the agency, while DNI spokeswoman Olivia Coleman contradicted reports that the CIA had carried out a “raid” to seize the material.
“This is false – the CIA did not raid the DNI’s office,” Coleman wrote in response to a now-deleted posting.
“It’s immaterial whether those documents were in her personal office. If those documents were taken away from her custody by CIA as she was preparing to declassify them, that’s a problem,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) fired back.
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