A Trail of Destruction Followed Fauci's Discussion of the Lab Leak Hypothesis
As with the JFK files, defenders of the official story evaded accountability.
While media coverage focused on partisan theatrics, Dr. Anthony Fauci’s testimony this week to a House oversight subcommittee on the federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic shed cool new light on the debate about the origins of the deadly disease that killed more than one million Americans and infected 80 million people worldwide.
Fauci took the witness stand to respond to the disclosure of what Scientific American called “a trove of incendiary emails written by one of his closest advisers.” In a series of terse statements, Fauci acknowledged that Dr. David Morens, with whom he co-wrote scientific papers, had acted unethically and inappropriately in deleting emails discussing the hypothesis that the virus originated with a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
The destruction of emails to avoid public disclosure reminded more than one JFK Facts reader of the trail of destruction that followed JFK’s assassination in November 1963. As chronicled by staff writer Chad Nagle in these pages, the CIA, White House, FBI, Defense Intelligence Agency, and Secret Service all destroyed files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy — at the same time that the government (and national media) were denouncing conspiratorial explanations of Kennedy’s murder as baseless.
As Mark Twain said, “History doesn’t repeat itself. But it often rhymes.”
Memes and Facts
The Monday appearance was the first time that Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), testified publicly since retiring in 2022. The results were not always edifying.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican provocateur from Georgia, ostentatiously refused to address Fauci as “Doctor,” generating Democratic indignation and the kind of headlines Greene wished for, as well as spawning another meme that she probably did not.
“Committee to Confirm Our Conspiracy Theories comes up short,” proclaimed Dana Milbank of the Washington Post, distilling the Democrats’ talking point that the Republican-led committee had pursued unfounded theories and found nothing.
And it is true that the Republican yarn that Fauci had a secret meeting at CIA headquarters to lobby against the lab leak theory received no corroboration at the hearing. Under oath, Fauci said he had not visited CIA headquarters since the anthrax scare in 2002.
But Fauci himself testified the lab leak hypothesis was not a conspiracy theory. His testimony showed how much the debate about the possibility has changed in four years. Once dismissed out of hand, the lab leak hypothesis is now widely regarded as a plausible scenario. Indeed, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, it is the most plausible explanation.
Fauci acknowledged that, as the pandemic was erupting in February 2020, several colleagues had raised the possibility of a lab leak with him. He said he encouraged them to make their case to appropriate authorities, insisting he was open-minded.
I did not try to steer the discussion in any direction. It was decided that several participants would more carefully examine the genomic sequence. After this further examination several who at first were concerned about lab manipulation became convinced that the virus was not deliberately manipulated.
Fauci’s claim that he did not try to steer discussion of the issue is savvy revisionism, not history. At the time, Fauci (and mainstream news organizations following his lead) unequivocally dismissed the lab leak hypothesis as a “conspiracy theory,” with no basis in science.
In fact, as Matt Taibbi of Racket News and Ryan Grim of the Intercept reported, the scientists consulted were not so certain. Said one, “Accidental release is a scenario many will not be comfortable with, but cannot be dismissed out of hand.”
Fauci and others sought to dismiss it out of hand.
In February 2020, Peter Daszak, a British zoologist and president of a nonprofit research firm called EcoHealth Alliance, sought to quash claims that the novel coronavirus originated in a lab. He organized a group of 26 scientists to write an open letter that was published in the Lancet medical journal addressing the origins of the virus.
“The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumors and misinformation around its origins,” said Daszak and his co-authors. “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.”
Daszak, however, had an undisclosed conflict of interest in the controversy. In September 2021, The Intercept reported that EcoHealth Alliance had, in a proposal to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), offered to manipulate novel SARS-related viruses in their lab to make new viruses that critics say are molecularly identical to the COVID-19 virus that ravaged the world.
From the Intercept:
Among the scientific tasks the group described in its proposal, which was rejected by DARPA, was the creation of full-length infectious clones of bat SARS-related coronaviruses and the insertion of a tiny part of the virus known as a “proteolytic cleavage site” into bat coronaviruses. Of particular interest was a type of cleavage site able to interact with furin, an enzyme expressed in human cells.
EcoHealth Alliance also partnered with Chinese scientists in Wuhan Institute of Virology in studying other types of viruses.
“Let’s look at the big picture,” MIT molecular biologist Alina Chan commented to The Intercept. “A novel SARS coronavirus emerges in Wuhan with a novel cleavage site in it. We now have evidence that, in early 2018, they [EcoHealth Alliance] had pitched inserting novel cleavage sites into novel SARS-related viruses in their lab. This definitely tips the scales [in favor of the lab leak hypothesis] for me. And I think it should do that for many other scientists too.˜
That was almost three years ago. On the day Fauci testified, Chan published an illustrated opinion piece, “Why the Pandemic Probably Started in a Lab, in Five Key Points,” in the New York Times, a publication often unfriendly to those who question official stories.
“The pandemic most likely occurred because a virus escaped from a research lab in Wuhan, China,” Chin concluded. “If so, it would be the most costly accident in the history of science.”
If so, the implications for international law, U.S.-China relations, global public health policy, and the multi-billion dollar vaccine industry are huge. If confirmed, the lab leak hypothesis would re-arrange the world.
‘I Think We Are All Safe’
A televised hearing on Capitol Hill in an election year is not an ideal venue for parsing complex scientific arguments about a sensitive subject.
Democrats Raul Ruiz and Jamie Raskin argued, with considerable evidence, that the Republican campaign to demonize Fauci and other advocates of masking and vaccines has resulted in a deluge of death threats to public health officials that threaten the future of the profession. They defended Fauci as a public servant whose expertise had saved countless lives.
But, even if you accept Fauci’s bona fides as a public servant (and I do), Morens’ emails indicate he feared public disclosure of his communications with Fauci and others about the possibility of a lab leak.
In a February 2021 email to a colleague that was obtained by the House subcommittee, Morens wrote:
“I learned from your FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] lady here now how to make emails disappear when I am FOIA’ed but before the search starts so I think we are all safe [emphasis added] plus I deleted most of these earlier emails after sending them to Gmail.”
How many emails were deleted, what they said—and what Fauci said—is unknown, and maybe unknowable.
But in writing, I think we are all safe, Morens all but confirmed that he had deleted information he believed might be dangerous to him and his colleagues. What was the danger? He sounds like a man with something to hide. He sounds like James Angleton, the CIA counterintelligence chief who told colleagues in early 1964 that he wanted to “wait out” the Warren Commission investigating JFK’s assassination. (Angleton didn’t want to disclose just how closely he and top aides had monitored accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in the six weeks before Kennedy was shot dead.)
In both cases, defenders of the government’s official story of a catastrophic event sought to avoid accountability by concealing relevant evidence from investigators.
(“The National Institutes of Health has put Morens on leave,” Politico reported, “and … the Department of Health and Human Services has stripped Daszak and his group, EcoHealth Alliance, of its federal funding.” EcoHealth Alliance recently posted its “Response to Recent Allegations.”)
‘It Was Wrong’
In Monday’s hearing, Fauci attempted to distance himself from Morens, not always convincingly. He initially denied Morens’ claim that he could “walk into Fauci’s office any time he wanted.” Then he acknowledged that, in fact, Morens had walked into his office on several occasions.
Fauci denied he had engaged in attempts to obstruct the Freedom of Information Act. He denied communicating with Morens about official business on a private email account, and he denied encouraging Morens to do so.
But as Fauci absolved himself, he impeached Morens’ credibility, lending credence to the notion that his colleague and collaborator had acted improperly.
“Did it violate NIAID policy to use personal email for official business?” Kentucky Republican James Comer asked.
Fauci: “Yes.”
Did Morens violate NIAID policy to delete records to avoid FOIA?
Fauci: “Yes.”
Did it violate policy for Morens to edit an EcoHealth press release?
“Yes,” said Fauci. “It was a conflict of interest.”
In March 2021, Morens edited a letter that Daszak sent to the National Institutes of Health. Did that violate policy? Comer asked.
“Yes,” said Fauci.
Morens later advised Daszak about how to explain to NIH the failure of EcoHealth to file requisite progress reports on time. Did that violate policy?
“Yes,” said Fauci. “It was wrong and inappropriate and violated policy.”
‘Adverse Inference’
Comer, who led the failed and forgotten Republican campaign to impeach Biden, proved more interested in sound bites than in fleshing out the story. He didn’t follow up on Fauci’s answers.
Nor did Comer mention the committee’s finding that State Department’s cables about the origins of the pandemic (like this key JFK assassination file) remain heavily redacted. (For example, see Covid-related documents here and here.)
But Rep. Howard Griffith of Virginia made a point that applies equally to JFK’s assassination and the lab leak hypothesis.
“In civil law,” he noted, “when one party does not disclose evidence in its possession, a jury is allowed to draw an adverse inference that the missing information destroyed or not produced was unfavorable.”
Just as it is fair conclude that the evidence destroyed in JFK's assassination was unfavorable to the government’s forensically dubious “lone gunman” theory, so it is fair to conclude that the destroyed emails were unfavorable to those arguing against the lab leak hypothesis.
That’s not proof the lab leak scenario is true. It is yet more evidence that it is true.
William there is no reason why you shouldn't have an open mind about this. The answers to this question are in fact not clear cut, with plenty of good evidence for either conclusion, so why devote yourself to one answer?
Publishing this analysis certainly has not won Jeff many kudos among his subscribers, so for that alone he is to be commended. I have written several comments on this Stack on the many parallels between the Covid & JFK “conspiracy narratives.” As have stated before: upholding the “natural origins” theory in the Proximal Origins Lancet article is analogous to believing the Lone Gunman theory in the Warren Report. So it is apt that Jeff acknowledges Lab Leak does dramatically change the interpretation all events over the past several years.
I understand that such reinterpretation would cause for too much cognitive dissonance for some who won’t accept that they were part of an unethical (if highly profitable to some bad actors) human experiment. But haven’t we seen this before within the JFK saga?
My final comment is that Fauci (like A Dulles) is ultimately just another arrogant “cover up manager” for a more powerful group calling the policy shots, in this case, the National Security Council — the agency at the top of the flow chart related to Covid public policy.
If you were unaware of this fact, you need to get better informed. This operation was not under the control of NIH/CDC much less HHS.