Fauci, Scientists With Ties to Chinese Laboratory Briefed Intelligence Officials on COVID-19 Origins: Documents

Dr. Anthony Fauci in Washington on Dec. 9, 2022. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

Dr. Anthony Fauci and scientists connected to the Chinese laboratory located in the city where the first COVID-19 cases were detected briefed top U.S. intelligence officials in early 2020 about the origins of COVID-19, according to newly obtained emails.

Fauci, Dr. Peter Daszak, and Ralph Baric were among those selected to brief a group that included officials with the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, according to emails obtained and released by the nonprofit U.S. Right to Know.

The briefing was held on Feb. 3, 2020, to “discuss and identify what data, information, and samples are needed to understand the evolutionary origins of 2019-nCoV and more effectively respond to the outbreak and resulting misinformation,” a summary stated. COVID-19 is caused by SARS-CoV-2, also known as 2019-nCoV.

Fauci at the time headed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which provided funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Chinese lab. Daszak is president of the EcoHealth Alliance, which served as an intermediary between the institute and Chinese scientists, while Baric, a virologist at the University of North Carolina, has frequently collaborated with the scientists in experiments on bat coronaviruses.

Fauci talked to the group about the “perspective from NIH/NIAID,” an agenda shows. The NIAID is one of the institutes and centers that make up the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It wasn’t clear what Daszak and Baric planned to say.

The call featured members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, which was asked by the White House to rapidly examine information pertaining to the origins of the COVID-19 virus.

The academies “consulted leading experts” in fields including virology and coronaviruses, including Baric, and told the White House on Feb. 6, 2020, that the virus was related to a coronavirus collected from bats in China. The letter didn’t mention the Wuhan lab or the possibility that the virus came from there.

Daszak told Baric in an email previously obtained by U.S. Right to Know (pdf) that he “got some questions” during the call about the Wuhan lab and offered to recuse himself from discussions “about the conspiracy theories re. lab release or bioengineering.”

“I don’t think this committee will be getting into the lab release or bioengineering hypothesis again any time soon - White House seems to be satisfied with the earlier meeting, paper in Nature, and general comments within scientific community,” Daszak added. “National Security staff were in the room.”

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence announced in April 2020 that the intelligence community “concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified,” though it may have stemmed from “an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan.”

Downplaying Lab Origin Theory

The announcement was later referenced by Fauci and others as they downplayed the possibility of a lab origin.

The newly released emails “suggest that Fauci and conflicted scientists with ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology maneuvered the Intelligence Community and the White House into a false and premature conclusion that COVID-19 had a natural origin,” Gary Ruskin, executive director and co-founder of U.S. Right to Know, told The Epoch Times via email.

Daszak, Baric, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the academies didn’t respond to requests for comment. Fauci couldn’t be reached.

Baric and Daszak have “relevant expertise,” making it appropriate to include them in the briefing, Justin Kinney, an associate professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and co-founder of Biosafety Now, told The Epoch Times via email.

“I am concerned, however, that Baric and Daszak might not have been fully forthcoming during the call,” he wrote. “The public needs to know, in particular, whether Baric and Daszak revealed that they had, together with collaborators in Wuhan, recently proposed in a DARPA grant to engineer viruses that had all the hallmarks of SARS-CoV-2.”

EcoHealth Alliance proposed to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) experiments to manipulate bat coronaviruses. The proposal, which involved Baric, wasn’t funded. DARPA determined that a Fauci-led paper asserting a natural origin for the COVID-19 virus was based on “unwarranted assumptions,” according to a paper released this week.

Emails previously released and obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests show Fauci met with Baric to discuss chimeras, or a combination of viruses, after COVID-19 started circulating and that Fauci discussed with Dr. Francis Collins, the head of the NIH at the time, U.S. funding for experiments in Wuhan. Both Fauci and Collins have alleged that the U.S.-funded research couldn’t have resulted in SARS-CoV-2.

“Since the FOIA release of Fauci’s emails, it’s been obvious he led an effort to cover up his involvement in funding and sharing dangerous coronavirus research with China. His corrupt efforts certainly gave China and others time to destroy evidence of the origin,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.

The U.S. intelligence community has since become divided on the origins matter.

The FBI has determined COVID-19 likely came from a Wuhan lab while the Energy Department has reportedly aligned with the bureau. Several other agencies maintain support for a natural origin; some are undecided.

President Joe Biden in March signed a bill mandating the declassification of intelligence related to the origins of COVID-19, but the intelligence hasn’t yet been declassified.

John Ratcliffe, the previous director of national intelligence, told Congress in April that evidence supports a lab leak.