Tipsheet

Why the CIA Was Not Pleased With Yesterday's COVID Whistleblower Hearing

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  May 14, 2026 7:00 AM

The Central Intelligence Agency was unhappy with Congress yesterday: the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee held a hearing with a CIA whistleblower, James Erdman, a senior operations agent who was part of the Director’s Initiatives Group investigating the origins of the COVID pandemic. Erdman said the agency did not follow lawful oversight and that retaliation was directed at analysts who disagreed with CIA management. 


It’s nothing you haven’t heard or suspected: CIA analysts concluded that the COVID pandemic was likely a lab leak from Wuhan, but they were overruled. Additionally, there was a tidbit about files on MKULTRA and the JFK assassination that are still being kept under lock and key. To this day, Sen. Rand Paul, the committee chair, says that the CIA has yet to turn over files he’s requested about the origin of the COVID pandemic. As expected, the personnel behind the reported cover-up are probably the ones involved in the gain-of-function scheme that led to this fiasco. 

The CIA claimed this hearing was unnecessary, as they concluded it was likely a lab leak, that closed-door testimony had already been obtained from Erdman, and that the agency wasn't given a heads-up. Paul responded by saying that closed-door testimony is not oversight (via Public):

James Erdman III, a senior CIA operations officer who led the Director’s Initiatives Group investigation into Covid origins under DNI Tulsi Gabbard, appeared under subpoena from committee Chairman Rand Paul. Erdman told senators that the CIA “did not comply with lawful oversight” during his investigation, and said, “CIA managers retaliated against [analysts] for their refusal to agree with management’s middle-of-the-night anonymous review.”

Erdman testifie,d “The CIA illegally monitored the computer and phone usage of DIG [Director’s Initiative Group] personnel, their investigations, and contact with whistleblowers…One CIA contractor assisting with the DIG’s investigation into the events that transpired between 2022 and 2023 was fired by the CIA one day after meeting with the DIG.” Erdman said the CIA had not cleared his testimony or written statement before the hearing

The CIA denounced the hearing as “dishonest political theater,” and not a single Democratic Senator showed up for it. A CIA spokesperson, Liz Lyons, said in a statement that “the Committee acted in bad faith by subpoenaing an Agency officer for testimony today without notifying CIA.” She added that “the witness testifying today is not appearing as a whistleblower in pursuit of the truth, but instead in response to the subpoena issued by Chairman Paul.” And she implied the hearing was not needed since “the CIA has already assessed Covid-19 most likely originated from a lab leak, and efforts to undermine that conclusion are disingenuous.”

But the public CIA statement quoted at the hearing did not address Erdman’s specific claims about DIG monitoring, the contractor firing, or the 40 boxes of JFK and MKUltra files. Sen. Paul, who noted that “closed-door testimony doesn’t provide oversight” and “public testimony provides oversight.” The CIA made public in January 2025 a low-confidence assessment that COVID-19 likely had a research-related origin, while saying both lab and natural-origin scenarios remained plausible, which Paul called “a cleanup operation.” Nor did she address Erdman’s claim that, “When the DIG ceased operations, the CIA also took back 40 boxes of JFK files and MKUltra files being processed for declassification by DNI.”

[…]

Erdman said that as of August 12, 2021, the CIA was considering calling Covid a lab leak, but that the conclusion “changed on August 17th of 2021.” Erdman told the panel that “the CIA would not provide us documentation that we asked for” and “we have no idea why that changed.” Erdman also testified that “Director Gabbard is working through, I believe, 2,000 pages” of Covid origins records the CIA had been resisting releasing. That figure contrasts with the five-page summary the ODNI delivered to Congress in 2023. Senator Josh Hawley asked Erdman whether the five-page report was “all the information the United States government had,” and Erdman replied, “that is not all the information.”

Erdman described a 2022 CIA “re-look” in which eight of 10 analysts and six of seven technical experts leaned toward a lab leak. He said management overruled the team and changed the analytic line to read that “we may never precisely know the origin of SARS-CoV-2.” Paul noted that there have been over 1,500 major lab leaks.

Sen. Paul revealed that the CIA is still denying him information that Senators are entitled to see under the Constitution, which requires Congressional oversight of the executive branch. Paul said the CIA had resisted releasing to him the underlying Covid origins analyses by its own scientists, even in classified form.

[…]

Part of the problem is bureaucracy and groupthink. Erdman identified bureaucratic self-protection, what he called “iron rice bowls,” and groupthink within the National Intelligence Council (NIC). “The bureaucracy is real,” he said, “Every day feels like a fight just to get simple things done.”

Some appeared to be protecting China. Erdman said there was “a reluctance to provide information that would be geopolitically destabilizing or provide ammunition” for “actions that maybe they thought would be unwise.” He told Senator Joni Ernst that one whistleblower described a pervasive concern that “there’s too many people willing to make excuses for China in this organization for the wrong reasons.”

Another reason is conflicts of interest, said Erdman. The people who covered up Covid’s likely origin in a lab are many of the same people who funded and participated in it. “It isn’t required that you come up with a conspiracy where interests converge,” said Paul, quoting George Carlin, noting that “we funded a lot of dangerous research.”

However, what launched the primetime shows was the initially reported raid on Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s office by intelligence officials, where JFK and MKULTRA files were seized. MKULTRA was a mind control operation run by the CIA. These files were not seized by the CIA today. There was no raid on Gabbard’s office—Katie Pavlich has more:

The documents were not taken today and it was not a raid on DNI Gabbard's office

-People from the CIA took documents (related to the JFK assassination/MKUltra) from the National Reconnaissance Office *last year* in the middle of the night during the government shutdown and have not returned/is withholding them from ODNI

-Because the CIA is withholding these documents, they cannot be declassified and scanned for public release 

-"The CIA doesn't think they answer to anyone."

-"I doubt [CIA Director] Ratcliffe knew about it"

A cover-up about the COVID pandemic? Well, that’s another story, but one you already knew. Of course, they did. Another example of the public knowing the truth before the lazy, stupid, slow, and corrupt media could piece it together.