Former CIA officer James Erdman III and other witnesses testified before Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s declassification task force as lawmakers reviewed the CIA’s MKULTRA program and questioned whether Congress has been misled for decades.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
A House Oversight subcommittee hearing on the CIA’s MKULTRA program brought new attention to destroyed records, alleged secret facilities, claims of hidden documents and testimony from a former CIA officer who said he does not believe the research ended.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., chaired Tuesday’s hearing, titled “Mind Control and Accountability: Uncovering the Truth of the CIA’s MKULTRA Experiments,” before the House Oversight Committee’s Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets.
The hearing focused on the CIA program that operated from 1953 to 1973 and involved experiments on unwitting people, including American citizens, hospital patients, prisoners and veterans. The program included the use of LSD, hypnosis, electroshock, sensory deprivation and psychological techniques as the agency pursued methods of behavioral control.
Luna opened the hearing by describing MKULTRA as “crimes committed by the Central Intelligence Agency against American citizens” and “crimes against humanity.”
“This was a deliberate, systematic governmental operation… authorized by the very top of U.S. intelligence apparatus,” Luna said.
Lawmakers also examined the destruction of MKULTRA files. Luna said former CIA Director Richard Helms ordered records destroyed in 1973 as he left office. According to her remarks, Sidney Gottlieb and members of his team spent a day burning 152 files, and Gottlieb later had his personal papers destroyed. Luna said the head of the CIA’s records center objected in writing but was overruled.
“That is obstruction of justice. That is criminal destruction of federal records,” Luna said.
No one was imprisoned over the destruction of records, and victims did not receive formal compensation, Luna noted. She also said the CIA has long characterized the program as a failure, a conclusion she and other lawmakers questioned.
Luna said Congress and the American people may have been misled for more than 50 years about the scope and legacy of MKULTRA.
Video from the hearing was shared on X.
Luna also announced that the CIA is working to declassify newly discovered records connected to what she described as a previously unknown “forgery program.”
Former CIA officer and whistleblower James Erdman III testified that approximately 40 boxes of sensitive records were removed from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence during declassification review efforts. His testimony echoed claims he made in May 2026 before the Senate Homeland Security Committee.
According to prior reporting, Erdman said the CIA “took back 40 boxes of JFK files and MKULTRA files being processed for declassification by DNI Tulsi Gabbard” as part of what he characterized as “documented efforts to circumvent oversight.”
Luna and House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., later sent a preservation letter demanding that records be preserved and returned. Luna later said on X that MKULTRA documents were specifically requested by the task force as part of its investigation.
Luna clarified that the records dispute was “not a raid,” but said the removal still raises questions about whether the CIA is complying with lawful oversight and declassification requests.
The hearing also included discussion of allegations involving a CIA-linked facility in Germany where MKULTRA victims were allegedly tortured. Luna said she is investigating the claims and may seek assistance from the German government, including law enforcement support, to locate and identify possible victims or remains.
One witness claimed to have identified what may have been a secret CIA prison or black site in Germany connected to the experiments. Luna called the program “criminal in nature” and “horrifying,” saying it operated “unvetted, unchecked and that there was no accountability.”
A former CIA officer also testified that “I don’t believe that the research stopped,” adding to lawmakers’ concerns about whether related capabilities continued after MKULTRA was officially ended.
Additional reporting from Zero Hedge cited documents discussed at the hearing that described efforts to manipulate memory through hypnotic suggestion.
The report quoted one document as stating: “It’s feasible to take the memory of a definite event in the life of an individual, and through hypnotic suggestion, bring about the subsequent conscious recall to the effect that this event never actually took place. But that a different fictional event actually did occur.”
Zero Hedge wrote that the testimony raised questions about how far such capabilities may have advanced with newer technologies, including artificial intelligence, brain-computer interfaces and directed energy tools.
Another hearing clip was shared on X.
Author and journalist Stephen Kinzer, who has studied MKULTRA and Sidney Gottlieb, testified about the program’s structure and the CIA’s use of outside entities, including universities and institutions, to conceal the agency’s role.
Kinzer warned that Gottlieb effectively held “a license to kill” from the U.S. government. He said covert agencies today may have tools beyond anything available during the original program.
“There have been enormous advances in cyber technology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence. Covert agencies may have access to tools for mind control that Sidney Gottlieb could not have imagined,” Kinzer said, according to Zero Hedge.
O’Neill agreed that the scale of prior investment in MKULTRA made it unlikely that related capabilities were simply abandoned, according to the report. Another clip from the hearing was shared on X.
The hearing placed renewed pressure on intelligence agencies to declassify records and answer questions about the scope of MKULTRA, the destruction of documents and whether related research continued under other names or programs.
Luna said the task force will continue seeking records and accountability for a program she described as one of the darkest abuses in U.S. intelligence history.
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