The House Oversight Committee launched a new subcommittee on Tuesday that lawmakers believe will help ease public distrust of the government by shedding light on Washington’s deepest secrets.
Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, Kentucky Republican, announced the creation of the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, which will be led by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, Florida Republican.
Mr. Comer pitched the new subcommittee as a way to further President Trump’s quest for government transparency. The panel comes on the heels of his executive order to begin declassifying information on the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King.
“For far too long, the American people have had reasonable questions of what their government, which they fund, every day, keeps hidden about certain issues, and for far too long, the federal government has not answered these questions,” he said.
So far, no Democrats are on the panel.
The panel will be tasked with investigating a lengthy menu of purported government secrets, including the assassinations, along with diving into unidentified aerial phenomena, known as UAPs, unidentified submerged objects, Jeffrey Epstein’s client list, the origins of COVID-19 and files related to the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, Ms. Luna said.
Ms. Luna said that the panel is fully dedicated to transparency, and that she was “cautiously optimistic” that she and other lawmakers would not be stonewalled in their work. She said the White House, Justice Department, FBI and CIA are “very supportive” of her panel’s mission.
“This is not a conspiracy theory investigating committee. We’re actually looking to present truth to the American people,” Ms. Luna said.
The panel already has its list of Republicans who will join, including Reps. Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Eric Burleson of Missouri, Eli Crane of Arizona, Brandon Gill of Texas and Nancy Mace of South Carolina.
Ms. Luna planned for the subcommittee to be a bipartisan affair, and said that while she was still unsure which House Democrats would be added to the roster, her colleagues across the aisle are taking it seriously.
The first investigation lawmakers will undertake will be delving into the assassination of Mr. Kennedy. Ms. Luna hoped to bring in some of the doctors who originally examined the president’s body, along with members of bygone commissions that also investigated the assassination, to testify.
So far, the panel sent out letters Tuesday morning to gather more information from the State Department, Pentagon, CIA and NSA, with more to come. But the subcommittee will not have subpoena power on its own, Mr. Comer said.
“The task force is going to be a subsidiary of the full Oversight Committee,” he said. “So if we have to issue one, Congresswoman Luna and I will discuss it, and we’ll take appropriate action.”
• Alex Miller can be reached at amiller@washingtontimes.com.