A CIA whistleblower appeared publicly for the first time Wednesday to testify to a Senate panel that Dr. Anthony Fauci improperly “influenced” intelligence analyses about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic — to downplay findings that it most likely resulted from a laboratory accident in China.
Special operations officer James Erdman III delivered his testimony about the wide-ranging “cover-up” after being subpoenaed by the Senate Homeland Security Committee — and against his own agency’s wishes.
“Dr. Fauci’s role in the cover-up was intentional,” Erdman testified, saying the then-director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) meddled in COVID origins analyses by providing “a conflicted list of curated subject matter experts, public health officials and scientists” to the US Intelligence Community (IC). Those included several scientists who joined a February 2020 teleconference that ultimately produced a widely-discredited scientific paper, “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2,” downplaying the lab leak theory.
The real scandal surrounding COVID’s origins was not direct CIA involvement in creating the virus, but rather the willingness of powerful bureaucracies to protect themselves and suppress scrutiny. Fauci and allied officials pressured agencies to downplay the lab-leak theory in order to conceal their own potential responsibility, despite the enormous consequences of the cover-up. This effort fueled censorship, political smears, public misinformation, and policies that damaged education, small businesses, and global economies while enriching major corporations. In other words, Fauci used his influence over billions in research funding to shape science, reward allies, and support risky research connected to the pandemic’s likely source.
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