Robert F. Kennedy Jr. publicly accused the CIA of illegally seizing boxes of classified records related to his uncle's assassination, then reversed himself days later, saying the claim was false. The whiplash sequence, first reported by the New York Post, has exposed a tangled dispute between intelligence agencies, Congress, and the White House over who controls some of the most sensitive documents in American history.
Kennedy, the Health and Human Services secretary, told the Post that the CIA's reported move to take back 40 boxes of assassination-related files from the office of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was "illegal" and "sinister." He made the remarks from Iowa, where he was promoting Make America Healthy Again legislation.
Within days, he posted a retraction on X, saying he had "immediately investigated" the claim and "determined the story was false." No explanation followed for why he went public before verifying the facts.
Kennedy did not mince words in his initial interview. He framed the alleged seizure as part of a decades-long pattern of obstruction by the intelligence community:
"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."
He pointed to the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which set a final release date of 2025 for all remaining files. "The JFK assassination document act said they had to release all of that stuff," he told the Post.
Asked why the CIA would withhold material six decades after the assassination, Kennedy offered no definitive answer:
"I don't know. I mean, obviously, there's something that they feel like that they don't want the public to read. It's very strange."
The CIA pushed back hard. A spokesperson told the Post that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence "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." The spokesperson added that all boxes had been available to ODNI "for more than a year."
A White House spokesperson backed the CIA's account, confirming that "all such relevant documents were either provided or made available for review by ODNI, and no documents were taken from their offices."
DNI spokeswoman Olivia Coleman was even more direct, responding to a now-deleted social media post: "This is false, the CIA did not raid the DNI's office."
The conflicting accounts did not emerge in a vacuum. Former CIA officer James Erdman delivered whistleblower testimony before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, stating that the CIA had taken 40 boxes from Gabbard's office that were "being processed for declassification." That testimony set off a chain of congressional action, and a sharp response from the agency itself.
CIA spokeswoman Liz Lyons accused the Senate panel of acting in "bad faith" by subpoenaing Erdman without notifying the agency. The accusation itself is revealing. When a federal agency's first instinct is to complain about process rather than address the substance of a whistleblower's claims, the public is entitled to wonder what's being protected.
Sen. Mike Lee of Utah rejected the narrow framing offered by the DNI's denial. He fired back:
"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."
Lee's point cuts through the semantic dispute. Whether or not boxes physically left a particular room, the question is whether the CIA moved to block or delay declassification that Gabbard was preparing to carry out. That question remains unanswered.
The broader fight over congressional oversight of intelligence agencies has been a recurring flashpoint in Washington, and this episode fits the pattern.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida visited CIA headquarters at Langley and posted on X on May 13 with a blunt ultimatum: "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."
Luna and House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer of Kentucky followed up with a letter to CIA Director John Ratcliffe, instructing him to preserve assassination records and files from the agency's previously secret MK-Ultra program. Kennedy praised the effort, telling the Post he was "grateful to them for doing that."
The MK-Ultra reference is not incidental. The CIA's mind-control and human-behavior-modification program ran from the 1950s through the 1970s, and Kennedy has long argued that its full scope has never been disclosed. In a 2024 appearance on the Shawn Ryan podcast, he claimed the CIA "was directly involved in my uncle's assassination, and in the 60-year cover-up," and said the agency had conducted MK-Ultra programs at Fort Detrick and 220 universities across the country.
Whether one finds Kennedy's broader theories persuasive or not, the underlying demand, release the records the law requires you to release, is straightforward. Congress mandated it. The deadline has arrived. And the public is still waiting.
President Trump signed an executive order shortly after retaking office calling for an end to "endless delays" in the release of JFK assassination files. National Review reported that the January 23, 2025, order also covered the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. The directive gave the director of national intelligence and the attorney general 15 days to create a release plan for JFK files and 45 days for the RFK and MLK files.
"Everything will be revealed," Trump told reporters while signing the order. The executive order itself stated that the families of the victims "and the American people deserve transparency and truth."
That promise makes the current dispute all the more significant. If the executive branch has ordered full disclosure, and Congress mandated it by statute more than three decades ago, what exactly is the holdup? The CIA says all documents have been available. A former CIA officer testified under oath that 40 boxes were removed. Kennedy initially called it illegal, then said the story was false. The public is left to sort through contradictions.
Kennedy's willingness to speak out, and then retreat, raises its own questions. The HHS secretary has never been shy about challenging institutional power, as his public pushback on the administration's glyphosate executive order demonstrated. But going public with an explosive accusation against the CIA before verifying it, then quietly walking it back on social media, is not the same as principled dissent. It undercuts the credibility of the very cause he claims to champion.
What remains after Kennedy's retraction is a set of facts that deserve more attention, not less. A former CIA officer told a Senate committee, under oath, that the agency removed 40 boxes of records being prepared for declassification. The CIA's response was to accuse the Senate of bad faith for hearing the testimony. The DNI's office issued a denial, then apparently deleted the post it was responding to. And the White House sided with the CIA's version of events.
None of this resolves the core question: Are the American people going to see every document the 1992 law and the 2025 executive order require to be released? Or will the intelligence community continue to find procedural reasons to delay?
The administration's commitment to holding federal officials accountable for following the law should extend to every agency, including the ones with the most to hide.
Several open questions remain. What specifically was in the 40 boxes Erdman described? Are they the same boxes the CIA and White House say were always available? Why did ODNI initially state that boxes were seized, only to retract? And why did Kennedy go public without first confirming the facts he was citing?
The Post also noted a separate legal effort, reported in February 2026, to force the government to reveal what it knows about 8mm assassination footage shot by Dallas air-conditioning repairman Orville Nix. More than sixty years after Dealey Plaza, even the film record remains contested.
Congressional oversight is only as strong as the willingness to follow through. Luna's 24-hour deadline came and went. The letter to Ratcliffe asked him to preserve records. Whether preservation leads to actual public release is another matter entirely. The pattern in Washington, across administrations and across parties, has been to promise transparency and deliver delay.
The American people were told in 1992 that they would see these records. They were told again in 2025. They are still being told. At some point, telling stops being a promise and starts being a stall.