U.S. Declassifies Documents on COVID-19 Origins and Anthony Fauci’s Role

U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said the published materials point to links between Washington-funded research, the Wuhan Institute of Virology and attempts inside the government to influence public perceptions of the question of the virus’s origins.

The document package includes internal correspondence, whistleblower statements, and materials related to the work of the intelligence community and discussions of theories about the pandemic’s origins.

According to the published data, Fauci oversaw funding for research into bat coronaviruses conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The report says some of this work involved gain-of-function research. Supporters of the lab-leak theory view such experiments as one possible factor in the emergence of the pandemic.

“Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Anthony Fauci, as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), directed millions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer money to fund dangerous gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV)—work that many today believe was the source of an unintended laboratory leak that caused the pandemic,” the National Intelligence report says.

The documents also contain claims that some intelligence-community analysts who supported the theory of a laboratory origin for the virus faced professional pressure, restrictions on career opportunities and marginalization of their views.

“Throughout the pandemic, Fauci and politicized leaders inside the intelligence community created a closed loop of mutually beneficial information exchange. He provided NIAID-funded scientists whom he personally selected to advise the intelligence community. Those consultations influenced official intelligence assessments, which were then publicly presented as a scientific consensus to refute the lab-leak theory,” the report says.

Gabbard said the COVID-19 pandemic brought “enormous suffering and pain” to millions of Americans and people around the world. According to her, after “many years of lies, censorship and concealment of information,” Americans deserve transparency, truth and accountability.

Fauci himself has repeatedly rejected accusations in recent years that he concealed information about the origins of COVID-19. He has also said that both a natural origin of the virus and a laboratory accident remain possible theories, though in his view the available evidence points more toward natural transmission of the virus, while not providing a definitive conclusion.