The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) secretly escorted former chief White House medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci into its headquarters to “influence” the COVID-19 origins investigation, according to Republican lawmakers.
Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) said in a letter addressed to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Inspector General Christi Grimm that according to new information gathered by lawmakers, Dr. Anthony Fauci, then-director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), played a role in the CIA’s review of the origins of COVID-19.
“The information provided suggests that Dr. Fauci was escorted into [CIA] Headquarters — without a record of entry — and participated in the analysis to ‘influence’ the Agency’s review,” Wenstrup wrote. “Our goal is to ensure the scientific investigative process regarding the origins of COVID-19 was fair, impartial, and free of alternative influence.”
Fauci’s alleged visit to the George Bush Center for Intelligence headquarters in Langley, Virginia, did not have a date attached to Wenstrup’s letter, nor did the subcommittee Chairman disclose who provided the information to the panel.
Wenstrup requested Grimm make Special Agent Brett Rowland available for a voluntary transcribed interview and all documents and communications between federal agencies, including HHS, NIAID, and the U.S. Marshals Service.
“The American people deserve the truth — to know the origins of the virus and whether there was a concerted effort by public health authorities to suppress the lab leak theory for political or national security purposes,” Wenstrup wrote.
The allegations come after whistleblower testimony to the subcommittee claimed CIA officials paid six officers investigating the origins of COVID-19 to bury their conclusion that the virus likely originated from a Chinese lab.
Wenstrup and Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) wrote that an anonymous “highly credible senior-level CIA” official alleged that six members with “significant scientific expertise” in the federal agency tasked with investigating the roots of SARS-CoV-2 found that the virus likely originated in a Wuhan laboratory.
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“According to the whistleblower, at the end of its review, six of the seven members of the Team believed the intelligence and science were sufficient to make a low confidence assessment that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China,” the representatives wrote.
But after the officers concluded their findings, the CIA whistleblower claims the intelligence agency offered financial incentives to six of the seven experts involved in the investigation to change their narrative on the virus, according to a letter sent to CIA Director William Burns.
“The seventh member of the Team, who also happened to be the most senior, was the lone officer to believe COVID-19 originated through zoonosis,” the letter continued. “The whistleblower further contends that to come to the eventual public determination of uncertainty, the other six members were given a significant monetary incentive to change their position.”
Questions about whether the virus leaked out of the Wuhan Institute of Virology or spread worldwide after the virus transmitted from animals to humans still divide U.S. agencies today.
The Department of Energy and the FBI were among the first federal agencies earlier this year to assess with moderate confidence that the pandemic’s origins were most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan.
But the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declassified a long-awaited report in June about potential links between the Chinese lab and the origins of COVID, which stated three lab workers who became ill in 2019 could not be directly linked to the source of the pandemic as their symptoms were “consistent with but not diagnostic of COVID-19.”
Fauci, who led the COVID-19 response team for the White House in the Trump and Biden administrations, remains at the center of a conspiracy about the virus’s origins. He has publicly dismissed the lab leak theory since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020.
Earlier this year, the coronavirus subcommittee pressed Fauci about U.S. funding to the Wuhan lab after it reportedly emerged the NIH gave U.S.-based EcoHealth Alliance a $3.7 million grant in 2014, which approximately $600,000 went toward the Wuhan lab to study bat coronaviruses.
Fauci previously claimed the U.S. never spent money on virus research in a lab. But during an interview with Science published on Monday, he appeared to have shifted his response about alleged funding for the specific gain-of-function research.
“I had no idea the grant to [EcoHealth and the Wuhan lab] existed until all this exploded,” Fauci said. “It’s $121,000-a-year grant, and I had a $6 billion portfolio.
“So, when I said to my people, ‘Tell me what’s going on,’ they said. ‘This is the guidelines, and by no definition whatsoever is that gain-of-function of concern.’ Now, people are saying maybe those guidelines are a little too loose. My feeling is, absolutely, you should reexamine that, and if you want to change it, change it.”