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FTR #1189 This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Introduction: This program continues our series analyzing the Wuhan Institute of Virology as having been set up to take the fall for the Covid-19 pandemic, which–in our considered opinion–is a covert operation by the U.S. as part of the full-court press against China.
Underscoring a point of analysis from previous broadcasts, we note that, of paramount importance in this context, is the fact that ANY virus can be made in a laboratory, from scratch as is being done for the SARS-CoV‑2 (Covid-19) virus.
Ralph Baric–who did the gain-of-function modification on the Horseshoe Bat coronavirus, has been selected to engineer the Covid-19.
Note what might be termed a “virologic Jurassic Park” manifestation: ” . . . . The technology immediately created bio-weapon worries. . . . Researchers at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) drove that point home in 2005 when they resurrected the influenza virus that killed tens of millions in 1918–1919. . . .”
Central to the inquiry about a laboratory genesis for the virus is Ralph Baric. We note that:
- Baric’s modification of a horseshoe bat virus to make it more infectious (in collaboration with Shi Zhengli and in an EcoHealth Alliance affiliated project) took place in North Carolina, not Wuhan. “. . . . Critics have jumped on this paper as evidence that Shi was conducting “gain of function” experiments that could have created a superbug, but Shi denies it. The research cited in the paper was conducted in North Carolina.
- Baric has been using related techniques to text remdesivir (in 2017) and the Moderna vaccine. This places him in a milieu inextricably linked to the military and pre-dating the pandemic. ” . . . . Using a similar technique, in 2017, Baric’s lab showed that remdesivir — currently the only licensed drug for treating covid — could be useful in fighting coronavirus infections. Baric also helped test the Moderna covid vaccine and a leading new drug candidate against covid. . . .”
Next, we present analysis of a very important, albeit slanted Vanity Fair article:
- Pompeo State Department officials pursuing the lab-leak hypothesis were told to cover it up lest it shed light on U.S. government funding of research at the “Oswald Institute of Virology!”: ” . . . . In one State Department meeting, officials seeking to demand transparency from the Chinese government say they were explicitly told by colleagues not to explore the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s gain-of-function research, because it would bring unwelcome attention to U.S. government funding of it. . . . . In an internal memo obtained by Vanity Fair, Thomas DiNanno, former acting assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance, wrote that. . . staff from two bureaus . . . “warned” leaders within his bureau ‘not to pursue an investigation into the origin of COVID-19’ because it would ‘open a can of worms’ if it continued.’ . . . . As the group probed the lab-leak scenario, among other possibilities, its members were repeatedly advised not to open a ‘Pandora’s box,’ said four former State Department officials interviewed by Vanity Fair. . . .”
- Setting the orthodoxy in early 2020 with a Lancet article ruling out a laboratory origin for the virus was Peter Daszak, with approval from Ralph Baric: ” . . . . It soon emerged, based on emails obtained by a Freedom of Information group called U.S. Right to Know, that Daszak had not only signed but organized the influential Lancet statement, with the intention of concealing his role and creating the impression of scientific unanimity. . . .”
- ” . . . . In late March, former Centers for Disease Control director Robert Redfield received death threats from fellow scientists after telling CNN that he believed COVID-19 had originated in a lab. . . . ”
- Matthew Pottinger, a China hawk in the Trump administration, headed up a team to investigate the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis. Note that the gain-of-function milieu in the U.S. national security establishment was a retarding factor in the inquiry: ” . . . . By then, Matthew Pottinger had approved a COVID-19 origins team, run by the NSC directorate that oversaw issues related to weapons of mass destruction. A longtime Asia expert and former journalist, Pottinger purposefully kept the team small . . . . In addition, many leading experts had either received or approved funding for gain-of-function research. Their ‘conflicted’ status, said Pottinger, ‘played a profound role in muddying the waters and contaminating the shot at having an impartial inquiry.’ . . . .”
- Note that Lawrence Livermore scientists were involved with the genesis of the “China did it” hypothesis, after allegedly being alerted by a foreign source to look into their own files. ” . . . . An intelligence analyst working with David Asher sifted through classified channels and turned up a report that outlined why the lab-leak hypothesis was plausible. It had been written in May by researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which performs national security research for the Department of Energy. But it appeared to have been buried within the classified collections system. . . .”
- Note, also, that Chris Ford, a China hawk, was working to suppress the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis: ” . . . . Their frustration crested in December, when they finally briefed Chris Ford, acting undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security. He seemed so hostile to their probe that they viewed him as a blinkered functionary bent on whitewashing China’s malfeasance. But Ford, who had years of experience in nuclear nonproliferation, had long been a China hawk. . . .”
- The “China did it/Wuhan lab leak” hypothesis survived from the Trump administration and Mike Pompeo’s State Department to the Biden administration: ” . . . . The statement withstood ‘aggressive suspicion,’ as one former State Department official said, and the Biden administration has not walked it back. ‘I was very pleased to see Pompeo’s statement come through,’ said Chris Ford, who personally signed off on a draft of the fact sheet before leaving the State Department. ‘I was so relieved that they were using real reporting that had been vetted and cleared.’ . . . .”
- Avril Haines, whom we have cited in this series as a key participant in the Deep State shepherding of the “Lab-Leak Hypothesis,” looms large in the inquiry into the perpetuation of this propaganda meme: ” . . . . Inside the U.S. government, meanwhile, the lab-leak hypothesis had survived the transition from Trump to Biden. On April 15, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told the House Intelligence Committee that two ‘plausible theories’ were being weighed: a lab accident or natural emergence. . . .”
- The article concludes with the interesting use of the term “cut-out” to describe the EcoHealth Alliance. The term generally refers to an intelligence-community front organization. Is the author hinting at more? Did her editor take information out? ” . . . . The United States deserves a healthy share of blame as well. Thanks to their unprecedented track record of mendacity and race-baiting, Trump and his allies had less than zero credibility. And the practice of funding risky research via cutouts like EcoHealth Alliance enmeshed leading virologists in conflicts of interest at the exact moment their expertise was most desperately needed. . . .”
We conclude with two important points from an article used earlier in the program.
- Shi Zhengli has noted that opening up the WIV’s records is unacceptable: ” . . . . That demand is ‘definitely not acceptable,’ responded Shi Zhengli, who directs the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Wuhan Institute. ‘Who can provide evidence that does not exist?’ she told MIT Technology Review. Shi has said that thousands of attempts to hack its computer systems forced the institute to close its database. . . .”
- The U.S. would not be acceptable to such a proposition, if the Chinese demanded access to Ft. Detrick (part of which was shut down by the CDC in early August of 2019 on the eve of the pandemic). A commenter also noted the Rocky Mountain lab in his analysis, which we noted was one of the areas where Willy Burgdorfer appears to have worked on the development of Lyme Disease.) ” . . . . If a disease had emerged from the U.S. and the Chinese blamed the Pentagon and demanded access to the data, ‘what would we say?’ [Dr. Gerald] Keusch asked. ‘Would we throw out the red carpet, ‘Come on over to Fort Detrick and the Rocky Mountain Lab?’ We’d have done exactly what the Chinese did, which is say, ‘Screw you!’’ . . . .”
1a. Underscoring a point of analysis from previous broadcasts, we note that, of paramount importance in this context, is the fact that ANY virus can be made in a laboratory, from scratch as is being done for the SARS-CoV‑2 (Covid-19) virus.
Ralph Baric–who did the gain-of-function modification on the Horseshoe Bat coronavirus, has been selected to engineer the Covid-19.
Note what might be termed a “virologic Jurassic Park” manifestation: ” . . . . The technology immediately created bio-weapon worries. . . . Researchers at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) drove that point home in 2005 when they resurrected the influenza virus that killed tens of millions in 1918–1919. . . .”
The world is watching with alarm as China struggles to contain a dangerous new virus, now being called SARS-CoV‑2. It has quarantined entire cities, and the US has put a blanket ban on travellers who’ve been there. Health officials are scrambling to understand how the virus is transmitted and how to treat patients.
But in one University of North Carolina lab, there’s a different race. Researchers are trying to create a copy of the virus. From scratch.
Led by Ralph Baric, an expert in coronaviruses—which get their name from the crown-shaped spike they use to enter human cells—the North Carolina team expects to recreate the virus starting only from computer readouts of its genetic sequence posted online by Chinese labs last month.
The remarkable ability to “boot up” viruses from genetic instructions is made possible by companies that manufacture custom DNA molecules, such as Integrated DNA Technology, Twist Bioscience, and Atum. By ordering the right genes, which cost a few thousand dollars, and then stitching them together to create a copy of the coronavirus genome, it’s possible to inject the genetic material into cells and jump-start the virus to life.
The ability to make a lethal virus from mail-order DNA was first demonstrated 20 years ago. It’s enough of a bioterrorism concern that companies carefully monitor who is ordering which genes. . . . The technology immediately created bio-weapon worries. . . . Researchers at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) drove that point home in 2005 when they resurrected the influenza virus that killed tens of millions in 1918–1919. . . .”
1b. Central to the inquiry about a laboratory genesis for the virus is Ralph Baric. We note that:
- Baric’s modification of a horseshoe bat virus to make it more infectious (in collaboration with Shi Zhengli and in an EcoHealth Alliance affiliated project) took place in North Carolina, not Wuhan. “. . . . Critics have jumped on this paper as evidence that Shi was conducting “gain of function” experiments that could have created a superbug, but Shi denies it. The research cited in the paper was conducted in North Carolina. . . .”
- Baric has been using related techniques to text remdesivir (in 2017) and the Moderna vaccine. This places him in a milieu inextricably linked to the military and pre-dating the pandemic. ” . . . . Using a similar technique, in 2017, Baric’s lab showed that remdesivir — currently the only licensed drug for treating covid — could be useful in fighting coronavirus infections. Baric also helped test the Moderna covid vaccine and a leading new drug candidate against covid. . . .”
. . . . Critics have jumped on this paper as evidence that Shi was conducting “gain of function” experiments that could have created a superbug, but Shi denies it. The research cited in the paper was conducted in North Carolina.
Using a similar technique, in 2017, Baric’s lab showed that remdesivir — currently the only licensed drug for treating covid — could be useful in fighting coronavirus infections. Baric also helped test the Moderna covid vaccine and a leading new drug candidate against covid.
Research into covid-like viruses is vital, Baric said. “A terrible truth,” he said, “is that millions of coronaviruses exist in animal reservoirs, like bats, and unfortunately many appear poised for rapid transmission between species.”
Baric told KHN he does not believe covid resulted from gain-of-function research. But he signed the Science letter calling for a more thorough investigation of his Chinese colleagues’ laboratory, he said in an email, because while he “personally believe[s] in the natural origin hypothesis,” WHO should arrange for a rigorous, open investigation. . . .
. . . . The more than $50 million EcoHealth Alliance had received in U.S. funding since 2007 includes contracts and grants from two NIH institutes, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Agency for International Development, as well as Pentagon funds to look for organisms that could be fashioned into bioterror weapons. . . .
. . . . Scaling the Wall of Secrecy
U.S.-China tensions will make it very difficult to conclude any such study, scientists on both sides of the issue suggest. With their anti-China rhetoric, Trump and his aides “could not have made it more difficult to get cooperation,” said Dr. Gerald Keusch, associate director of the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory Institute at Boston University. If a disease had emerged from the U.S. and the Chinese blamed the Pentagon and demanded access to the data, “what would we say?” Keusch asked. “Would we throw out the red carpet, ‘Come on over to Fort Detrick and the Rocky Mountain Lab?’ We’d have done exactly what the Chinese did, which is say, ‘Screw you!’”
3. Next, we present analysis of a very important, albeit slanted Vanity Fair article:
- Pompeo State Department officials pursuing the lab-leak hypothesis were told to cover it up lest it shed light on U.S. government funding of research at the “Oswald Institute of Virology!”: ” . . . . In one State Department meeting, officials seeking to demand transparency from the Chinese government say they were explicitly told by colleagues not to explore the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s gain-of-function research, because it would bring unwelcome attention to U.S. government funding of it. . . . . In an internal memo obtained by Vanity Fair, Thomas DiNanno, former acting assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance, wrote that. . . staff from two bureaus . . . “warned” leaders within his bureau ‘not to pursue an investigation into the origin of COVID-19’ because it would ‘open a can of worms’ if it continued.’ . . . . As the group probed the lab-leak scenario, among other possibilities, its members were repeatedly advised not to open a ‘Pandora’s box,’ said four former State Department officials interviewed by Vanity Fair. . . .”
- Setting the orthodoxy in early 2020 with a Lancet article ruling out a laboratory origin for the virus was Peter Daszak, with approval from Ralph Baric: ” . . . . It soon emerged, based on emails obtained by a Freedom of Information group called U.S. Right to Know, that Daszak had not only signed but organized the influential Lancet statement, with the intention of concealing his role and creating the impression of scientific unanimity. . . .”
- ” . . . . In late March, former Centers for Disease Control director Robert Redfield received death threats from fellow scientists after telling CNN that he believed COVID-19 had originated in a lab. . . . ”
- Matthew Pottinger, a China hawk in the Trump administration, headed up a team to investigate the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis. Note that the gain-of-function milieu in the U.S. national security establishment was a retarding factor in the inquiry: ” . . . . By then, Matthew Pottinger had approved a COVID-19 origins team, run by the NSC directorate that oversaw issues related to weapons of mass destruction. A longtime Asia expert and former journalist, Pottinger purposefully kept the team small . . . . In addition, many leading experts had either received or approved funding for gain-of-function research. Their ‘conflicted’ status, said Pottinger, ‘played a profound role in muddying the waters and contaminating the shot at having an impartial inquiry.’ . . . .”
- Note that Lawrence Livermore scientists were involved with the genesis of the “China did it” hypothesis, after allegedly being alerted by a foreign source to look into their own files. ” . . . . An intelligence analyst working with David Asher sifted through classified channels and turned up a report that outlined why the lab-leak hypothesis was plausible. It had been written in May by researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which performs national security research for the Department of Energy. But it appeared to have been buried within the classified collections system. . . .”
- Note, also, that Chris Ford, a China hawk, was working to suppress the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis: ” . . . . Their frustration crested in December, when they finally briefed Chris Ford, acting undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security. He seemed so hostile to their probe that they viewed him as a blinkered functionary bent on whitewashing China’s malfeasance. But Ford, who had years of experience in nuclear nonproliferation, had long been a China hawk. . . .”
- The “China did it/Wuhan lab leak” hypothesis survived from the Trump administration and Mike Pompeo’s State Department to the Biden administration: ” . . . .. . . . The statement withstood ‘aggressive suspicion,’ as one former State Department official said, and the Biden administration has not walked it back. ‘I was very pleased to see Pompeo’s statement come through,’ said Chris Ford, who personally signed off on a draft of the fact sheet before leaving the State Department. ‘I was so relieved that they were using real reporting that had been vetted and cleared.’ . . . .”
- Avril Haines, whom we have cited in this series as a key participant in the Deep State shepherding of the “Lab-Leak Hypothesis,” looms large in the inquiry into the perpetuation of this propaganda meme: ” . . . . Inside the U.S. government, meanwhile, the lab-leak hypothesis had survived the transition from Trump to Biden. On April 15, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told the House Intelligence Committee that two ‘plausible theories’ were being weighed: a lab accident or natural emergence. . . .”
- The article concludes with the interesting use of the term “cut-out” to describe the EcoHealth Alliance. The term generally refers to an intelligence-community front organization. Is the author hinting at more? Did her editor take information out? ” . . . . The United States deserves a healthy share of blame as well. Thanks to their unprecedented track record of mendacity and race-baiting, Trump and his allies had less than zero credibility. And the practice of funding risky research via cutouts like EcoHealth Alliance enmeshed leading virologists in conflicts of interest at the exact moment their expertise was most desperately needed. . . .”
. . . . At times, it seemed the only other people entertaining the lab-leak theory were crackpots or political hacks hoping to wield COVID-19 as a cudgel against China. President Donald Trump’s former political adviser Steve Bannon, for instance, joined forces with an exiled Chinese billionaire named Guo Wengui to fuel claims that China had developed the disease as a bioweapon and purposefully unleashed it on the world. As proof, they paraded a Hong Kong scientist around right-wing media outlets until her manifest lack of expertise doomed the charade. . . .
. . . . On February 19, 2020, The Lancet, among the most respected and influential medical journals in the world, published a statement that roundly rejected the lab-leak hypothesis, effectively casting it as a xenophobic cousin to climate change denialism and anti-vaxxism. Signed by 27 scientists, the statement expressed “solidarity with all scientists and health professionals in China” and asserted: “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.”
The Lancet statement effectively ended the debate over COVID-19’s origins before it began. To Gilles Demaneuf, following along from the sidelines, it was as if it had been “nailed to the church doors,” establishing the natural origin theory as orthodoxy. “Everyone had to follow it. Everyone was intimidated. That set the tone.” . . . .
. . . . It soon emerged, based on emails obtained by a Freedom of Information group called U.S. Right to Know, that Daszak had not only signed but organized the influential Lancet statement, with the intention of concealing his role and creating the impression of scientific unanimity.
Under the subject line, “No need for you to sign the “Statement” Ralph!!,” he wrote to two scientists, including UNC’s Dr. Ralph Baric, who had collaborated with Shi Zhengli on the gain-of-function study that created a coronavirus capable of infecting human cells: “you, me and him should not sign this statement, so it has some distance from us and therefore doesn’t work in a counterproductive way.” Daszak added, “We’ll then put it out in a way that doesn’t link it back to our collaboration so we maximize an independent voice.”
Baric agreed, writing back, “Otherwise it looks self-serving and we lose impact.” . . . .
. . . . A months long Vanity Fair investigation, interviews with more than 40 people, and a review of hundreds of pages of U.S. government documents, including internal memos, meeting minutes, and email correspondence, found that conflicts of interest, stemming in part from large government grants supporting controversial virology research, hampered the U.S. investigation into COVID-19’s origin at every step.In one State Department meeting, officials seeking to demand transparency from the Chinese government say they were explicitly told by colleagues not to explore the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s gain-of-function research, because it would bring unwelcome attention to U.S. government funding of it.
In an internal memo obtained by Vanity Fair, Thomas DiNanno, former acting assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance, wrote that staff from two bureaus, his own and the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, “warned” leaders within his bureau “not to pursue an investigation into the origin of COVID-19” because it would “‘open a can of worms’ if it continued.” . . . .
. . . . But for most of the past year, the lab-leak scenario was treated not simply as unlikely or even inaccurate but as morally out-of-bounds. In late March, former Centers for Disease Control director Robert Redfield received death threats from fellow scientists after telling CNN that he believed COVID-19 had originated in a lab. . . .
. . . . In the words of David Feith, former deputy assistant secretary of state in the East Asia bureau, “The story of why parts of the U.S. government were not as curious as many of us think they should have been is a hugely important one.” . . . .
. . . . By then, Matthew Pottinger had approved a COVID-19 origins team, run by the NSC directorate that oversaw issues related to weapons of mass destruction. A longtime Asia expert and former journalist, Pottinger purposefully kept the team small, because there were so many people within the government “wholly discounting the possibility of a lab leak, who were predisposed that it was impossible,” said Pottinger. In addition, many leading experts had either received or approved funding for gain-of-function research. Their “conflicted” status, said Pottinger, “played a profound role in muddying the waters and contaminating the shot at having an impartial inquiry.” . . . .
. . . . Believing they had uncovered important evidence in favor of the lab-leak hypothesis, the NSC investigators began reaching out to other agencies. That’s when the hammer came down. “We were dismissed,” said Anthony Ruggiero, the NSC’s senior director for counterproliferation and biodefense. “The response was very negative.” . . . .
. . . . By the summer of 2020, Gilles Demaneuf was spending up to four hours a day researching the origins of COVID-19, joining Zoom meetings before dawn with European collaborators and not sleeping much. He began to receive anonymous calls and notice strange activity on his computer, which he attributed to Chinese government surveillance. “We are being monitored for sure,” he says. He moved his work to the encrypted platforms Signal and ProtonMail. . . .
. . . . As officials at the meeting discussed what they could share with the public, they were advised by Christopher Park, the director of the State Department’s Biological Policy Staff in the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, not to say anything that would point to the U.S. government’s own role in gain-of-function research, according to documentation of the meeting obtained by Vanity Fair.
Only two other labs in the world, in Galveston, Texas and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, were doing similar research. “It’s not a dozen cities,” Dr. Richard Ebright said. “It’s three places.”
Some of the attendees were “absolutely floored,” said an official familiar with the proceedings. That someone in the U.S. government could “make an argument that is so nakedly against transparency, in light of the unfolding catastrophe, was…shocking and disturbing.”
Park, who in 2017 had been involved in lifting a U.S. government moratorium on funding for gain-of-function research, was not the only official to warn the State Department investigators against digging in sensitive places. As the group probed the lab-leak scenario, among other possibilities, its members were repeatedly advised not to open a “Pandora’s box,” said four former State Department officials interviewed by Vanity Fair. The admonitions “smelled like a cover-up,” said Thomas DiNanno, “and I wasn’t going to be part of it.” . . . .
. . . . In the first year of the Trump administration, the moratorium was lifted and replaced with a review system called the HHS P3CO Framework (for Potential Pandemic Pathogen Care and Oversight). It put the onus for ensuring the safety of any such research on the federal department or agency funding it. This left the review process shrouded in secrecy. “The names of reviewers are not released, and the details of the experiments to be considered are largely secret,” said the Harvard epidemiologist Dr. Marc Lipsitch, whose advocacy against gain-of-function research helped prompt the moratorium. (An NIH spokesperson told Vanity Fair that “information about individual unfunded applications is not public to preserve confidentiality and protect sensitive information, preliminary data, and intellectual property.”)
Inside the NIH, which funded such research, the P3CO framework was largely met with shrugs and eye rolls, said a longtime agency official: “If you ban gain-of-function research, you ban all of virology.” He added, “Ever since the moratorium, everyone’s gone wink-wink and just done gain-of-function research anyway.” . . . .
. . . . By the summer of 2020, the State Department’s COVID-19 origins investigation had gone cold. Officials in the Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance went back to their normal work: surveilling the world for biological threats. “We weren’t looking for Wuhan,” said Thomas DiNanno. That fall, the State Department team got a tip from a foreign source: Key information was likely sitting in the U.S. intelligence community’s own files, unanalyzed. In November, that lead turned up classified information that was “absolutely arresting and shocking,” said a former State Department official. Three researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, all connected with gain-of-function research on coronaviruses, had fallen ill in November 2019 and appeared to have visited the hospital with symptoms similar to COVID-19, three government officials told Vanity Fair.
While it is not clear what had sickened them, “these were not the janitors,” said the former State Department official. “They were active researchers. The dates were among the absolute most arresting part of the picture, because they are smack where they would be if this was the origin.” The reaction inside the State Department was, “Holy shit,” one former senior official recalled. “We should probably tell our bosses.” The investigation roared back to life.
An intelligence analyst working with David Asher sifted through classified channels and turned up a report that outlined why the lab-leak hypothesis was plausible. It had been written in May by researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which performs national security research for the Department of Energy. But it appeared to have been buried within the classified collections system.
Now the officials were beginning to suspect that someone was actually hiding materials supportive of a lab-leak explanation. “Why did my contractor have to pore through documents?” DiNanno wondered. Their suspicion intensified when Department of Energy officials overseeing the Lawrence Livermore lab unsuccessfully tried to block the State Department investigators from talking to the report’s authors.
Their frustration crested in December, when they finally briefed Chris Ford, acting undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security. He seemed so hostile to their probe that they viewed him as a blinkered functionary bent on whitewashing China’s malfeasance. But Ford, who had years of experience in nuclear nonproliferation, had long been a China hawk. Ford told Vanity Fair that he saw his job as protecting the integrity of any inquiry into COVID-19’s origins that fell under his purview. Going with “stuff that makes us look like the crackpot brigade” would backfire, he believed.
There was another reason for his hostility. He’d already heard about the investigation from interagency colleagues, rather than from the team itself, and the secrecy left him with a “spidey sense” that the process was a form of “creepy freelancing.” He wondered: Had someone launched an unaccountable investigation with the goal of achieving a desired result?
He was not the only one with concerns. As one senior government official with knowledge of the State Department’s investigation said, “They were writing this for certain customers in the Trump administration. We asked for the reporting behind the statements that were made. It took forever. Then you’d read the report, it would have this reference to a tweet and a date. It was not something you could go back and find.”
After listening to the investigators’ findings, a technical expert in one of the State Department’s bioweapons offices “thought they were bonkers,” Ford recalled.
The State Department team, for its part, believed that Ford was the one trying to impose a preconceived conclusion: that COVID-19 had a natural origin. A week later, one of them attended the meeting where Christopher Park, who worked under Ford, advised those present not to draw attention to U.S. funding of gain-of-function research. . . .
. . . . The statement withstood “aggressive suspicion,” as one former State Department official said, and the Biden administration has not walked it back. “I was very pleased to see Pompeo’s statement come through,” said Chris Ford, who personally signed off on a draft of the fact sheet before leaving the State Department. “I was so relieved that they were using real reporting that had been vetted and cleared.” . . . .
Inside the U.S. government, meanwhile, the lab-leak hypothesis had survived the transition from Trump to Biden. On April 15, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told the House Intelligence Committee that two “plausible theories” were being weighed: a lab accident or natural emergence. . . .
. . . . China obviously bears responsibility for stonewalling investigators. Whether it did so out of sheer authoritarian habit or because it had a lab leak to hide is, and may always be, unknown.
The United States deserves a healthy share of blame as well. Thanks to their unprecedented track record of mendacity and race-baiting, Trump and his allies had less than zero credibility. And the practice of funding risky research via cutouts like EcoHealth Alliance enmeshed leading virologists in conflicts of interest at the exact moment their expertise was most desperately needed.
4. We conclude with two important points from an article used earlier in the program.
- Shi Zhengli has noted that opening up the WIV’s records is unacceptable: ” . . . . That demand is ‘definitely not acceptable,’ responded Shi Zhengli, who directs the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Wuhan Institute. ‘Who can provide evidence that does not exist?’ she told MIT Technology Review. Shi has said that thousands of attempts to hack its computer systems forced the institute to close its database. . . .”
- The U.S. would not be acceptable to such a proposition, if the Chinese demanded access to Ft. Detrick (part of which was shut down by the CDC in early August of 2019 on the eve of the pandemic). A commenter also noted the Rocky Mountain lab in his analysis, which we noted was one of the areas where Willy Burgdorfer appears to have worked on the development of Lyme Disease. ” . . . . If a disease had emerged from the U.S. and the Chinese blamed the Pentagon and demanded access to the data, ‘what would we say?’ [Dr. Gerald] Keusch asked. ‘Would we throw out the red carpet, ‘Come on over to Fort Detrick and the Rocky Mountain Lab?’ We’d have done exactly what the Chinese did, which is say, ‘Screw you!’’ . . . .”
. . . . The more than $50 million EcoHealth Alliance had received in U.S. funding since 2007 includes contracts and grants from two NIH institutes, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Agency for International Development, as well as Pentagon funds to look for organisms that could be fashioned into bioterror weapons. . . .
On Friday, 18 virus and immunology experts published a letter in the journal Science demanding a deeper dive. “Theories of accidental release from a lab and zoonotic spillover both remain viable,” they said, adding that the Wuhan Institute should open its records. One of the signatories was a North Carolina virologist who has worked directly with the Wuhan Institute’s top scientists.
. . . . That demand is “definitely not acceptable,” responded Shi Zhengli, who directs the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Wuhan Institute. “Who can provide evidence that does not exist?” she told MIT Technology Review. Shi has said that thousands of attempts to hack its computer systems forced the institute to close its database. . . .
. . . . Scaling the Wall of Secrecy
U.S.-China tensions will make it very difficult to conclude any such study, scientists on both sides of the issue suggest. With their anti-China rhetoric, Trump and his aides “could not have made it more difficult to get cooperation,” said Dr. Gerald Keusch, associate director of the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory Institute at Boston University. If a disease had emerged from the U.S. and the Chinese blamed the Pentagon and demanded access to the data, “what would we say?” Keusch asked. “Would we throw out the red carpet, ‘Come on over to Fort Detrick and the Rocky Mountain Lab?’ We’d have done exactly what the Chinese did, which is say, ‘Screw you!’”
Even MORE Fun With Science: Earthquake Weaponry
As usual, brilliant research, commentary and analysis — Dave Emory is a national treasure
Thanks so much for the kind words!
Here’s a story with intriguing implications: Peter Daszak just recused himself from the Lancet’s inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. While there’s no shortage of reasons for why Daszak should have recused himself and never been on the commission in the first place, no reason for the recusal was given. The commission website simply states that Daszak has recused himself.
So was this move a genuine attempt at avoid a conflict of interest? Or was this merely intended to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest? Well, as we’re also going to see, the Lancet has also updated the conflict-of-interest statements that were published in the Feb 2020 letter published in the Lancet by Daszak and numerous other top virologist dismissing the possibility of a lab leak. So it isn’t just Daszak doing the retroactive recusing here:
“On the commission’s website it states that Dr Daszak has “recused himself from Commission work on the origins of the pandemic” but gives no further information.”
The commission doesn’t tell us why Daszak recused himself. But it’s not exactly a mystery. Especially when the Lancet simultaneously updates the conflict-of-interest statement on the February 2020 letter published in the Lancet where Daszak and others dismissed the possibility of a lab leak:
Now here’s an excerpt with a bit more on what the Lancet published with this updated conflict-of-interest disclosure for that February 2020 letter. While the updated statement on Daszak’s conflicts-of-interest don’t explicitly mention the Wuhan Institute of Virology, it does point out that the EcoHealth Alliance worked in China “assessing the risk of viral spillover across the wildlife-livestock-human interface, and includes behavioural and serological surveys of people, and ecological and virological analyses of animals” and that this work involved “the production of a small number of recombinant bat coronaviruses to analyse cell entry and other characteristics of bat coronaviruses for which only the genetic sequences are available.” So Daszak’s conflict-of-interest statement was updated to include his organization’s work creating recombinant bat coronaviruses in partnership with Chinese researchers, which is a pretty big update to a conflict-of-interest statement for a letter dismissing the possibility of a lab leak:
“Criticism of The Lancet has focused on its failure to declare in the original letter that Dr Daszak had for years funded and worked with the lab at the centre of the leak theory – the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This link, in the eyes of critics, could make Dr Daszak partially culpable if the lab leak hypothesis was true.”
Yeah, it’s about as big a conflict as you could get with a conflict-of-interest statement on a lab leak theory: if it turns out the theory is true, the people asserting it can’t possibly be true — and yet are engaged in recombinant viral work with bat coronaviruses — could themselves be partially culpable:
So we’ll see what, if any, impact the recusal of Daszak from the Lancet commission on the origins of the virus actually has on that commission’s work. On the one hand, it’s not hard to cynically view this move as an attempt to preemptively address criticisms for the conclusion by the commission of a natural origin. On the other hand, that’s quite an update to Daszak’s conflict-of-interest statement that included the EcoHealth Alliance’s work on recombinant bat coronavirus work. But on the other other hand, it was an update that was basically irrefutable and unavoidable. Interpreting the belated acknowledgement of the irrefutable can be a tricky task.