US Politics
Secret Gabbard team entered CIA warehouse to retrieve Kennedy files
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Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, dispatched a secret team to a covert CIA warehouse in Washington to seize control of the classified Kennedy files, according to a report.
The team was dispatched in early April, arriving unannounced outside the hidden building and catching the agency off guard.
Three sources close to the CIA told Reuters that the group’s leader, Paul Allen, said that his team was “on a mission” to retrieve all of the files related to the assassinations of Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy.
Shortly after that, Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, a Trump administration official and the daughter-in-law of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, was waved into the secret CIA warehouse as part of Gabbard’s team.
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According to the Reuters sources, Fox Kennedy did not have the necessary clearance to enter the building. Despite that, she allegedly spent over an hour inside the facility.
Gabbard’s alleged seizure of the records lasted until 2 am, after which the vast collection of documents was transferred to the National Archives the following morning.
A statement from Gabbard’s office, seen by Reuters, claimed that the aggressive action was motivated by a shared understanding that “while the timeline was short, it had also been 60 years” since JFK’s death.
Later, during an April 10 cabinet meeting, the director of national intelligence confirmed that she had dispatched “hunters” to comb through FBI and CIA archives, claiming that they were “actively going out and trying to search out the truth.”
However, one of the Reuters sources claimed that Gabbard’s unilateral move came after pressure mounted on the ODNI to comply with an executive order issued by Trump that required the release of the files. The order deadline had passed in March, just a month before Gabbard ordered the seizure.
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One source claimed, though, that pressure had been building on Gabbard at the time, after a 45-day deadline for an executive order issued by Trump to review the documents ended in March.
A statement from the White House, though, hit out at any suggestion that there was division within the government’s agencies over the files.
“Efforts by the legacy media to sow internal division are a distraction that will not work,” spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement.
Trump campaigned on releasing the files, a move which Jack Schlossberg, JFK’s grandson, described as using the Kennedys as a “political prop.”
When the files were released, there was no evidence to suggest that there was any other shooter involved in JFK’s assassination other than Lee Harvey Oswald. However, the files did reveal that the shooter had been on the CIA’s radar for longer than they had previously admitted.
Gabbard has become an increasingly polarizing figure, although there was widespread opposition to her nomination as director of national intelligence before she even took office.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slammed Gabbard’s nomination, claiming she had supported “very pro-war individuals abroad,” referencing the current director of national intelligence’s praise for Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad.
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Larry Pfeiffer, George W. Bush’s chief of staff at the CIA, also ripped into Gabbard’s record while talking to The Hill, accusing her of making statements that “sound like they came right out of the Kremlin’s talking points.”
“She’s never managed anything larger than a congressional office or maybe like a brigade,” he added, referencing her deployment in the Iraq War and service as a House Democrat. “That’s a lot different than trying to orchestrate and coordinate this wild consultation of intel elements that we call the US intelligence community.
“I think she isn’t really prepared for that.”
Since taking office, Gabbard has demanded access to internal emails, to comb them for any opposition to Trump’s agenda; scuppered the Justice Department’s investigation into John Brennan, by withdrawing the clearances of potential witnesses who could have testified against him; and released a bizarre video claiming that global “elites” were pushing the world towards a “nuclear holocaust.”
The Independent has contacted the ODNI for comment.
