(The Defender)—Newly disclosed emails reveal that top officials at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) planned to provide Congress with a response that “doesn’t actually answer the questions” about a grant the agency awarded to a nonprofit for controversial research conducted in collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
Independent journalist Paul D. Thacker, author of “The Disinformation Chronicle” on Substack, analyzed the emails, which were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by investigative reporter Jimmy Tobias.
Thacker’s report shows NIH officials discussing how to respond to congressional inquiries about the grant awarded to EcoHealth Alliance.
In a July 2020 email exchange, Adrienne Hallett, then-NIH associate director for legislative policy, outlined a strategy to evade direct answers to congressional inquiries.
“We are going to draft a response to the letter that doesn’t actually answer the questions in the letter but rather presents a narrative of what happened at a high level,” Hallett wrote. “The Committee may come back for other documents but I’m hoping to run out the clock.”
The email chain reveals that top NIH leadership, including then-Director Francis Collins and then-Principal Deputy Director Lawrence Tabak, were aware of and supportive of this approach.
Collins responded, “Sounds like a good plan.” Dr. Michael Lauer, the NIH’s deputy director for extramural research, replied, “Thanks so much Adrienne! I’ll draft something today.”
Incredible (or not)…
An NIH staffer outlines her plans to evade Congressional scrutiny to Collins & Tabak ⬇️
Collins: "Sounds like a good plan"
From @JamesCTobias' latest FOIAshttps://t.co/EovAm5oxk6@randpaul @RepMGriffith pic.twitter.com/ytN05Bh3LW
— harish seshadri (@harishseshadri2) July 31, 2024
The congressional letter in question was signed by the chairs of the Energy and Commerce and the Science, Space, and Technology committees and the chairs of their respective investigative subcommittees.
EcoHealth refused to answer NIH questions
EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit organization focused on emerging infectious diseases, has been at the center of debates surrounding the origins of COVID-19 due to its work with bat coronaviruses and its partnership with the Wuhan lab.
In April 2020, the NIH terminated EcoHealth’s grant amid concerns about its collaborative research project in Wuhan.
Three months later, in July 2020, the NIH reinstated the grant but immediately suspended it. The agency imposed certain conditions, including requiring answers from EcoHealth Alliance on such issues as the disappearance of Wuhan lab scientist Huan Yanling and details on how the Wuhan lab determined the genetic sequence of SARS-CoV-2.
In a July 2020 email, Tabak expressed concerns over potential political blowback from the grant reinstatement.
An August 2020 email from Lauer noted that EcoHealth refused to answer the questions NIH required.
In May 2023, the NIH reinstated a reduced version of the grant. However, a year later, under pressure from lawmakers, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services suspended all funding for EcoHealth Alliance grants and initiated proceedings to block any future federal research funding.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which operated the Emerging Pandemic Threats Program and had funded numerous EcoHealth Alliance projects, announced it had suspended all funding to the organization.
The EcoHealth Alliance controversy is not an isolated incident. Further evidence from several rounds of FOIA’d documents Tobias received (not discussed in Thacker’s current article) reveals a pattern of concealment and subterfuge within the NIH and related government agencies regarding COVID-19 origins and related research.
Collins ‘pleased’ with early 2020 WaPo article dismissing lab-leak theory
In a separate incident, emails obtained through FOIA requests reveal that Collins actively supported efforts to discredit the theory that COVID-19 originated in a lab.
In February 2020, Collins endorsed a Washington Post article criticizing Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) for suggesting the possibility of a lab origin for the virus. The article, which stated the lab-leak theory was a debunked conspiracy, was later “corrected” because “then as now, there was no determination about the origins of the virus.”
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Despite the correction, the article still refers to a “fringe theory” and the article URL still includes the word “conspiracy.”
Collins endorsed the Post article despite growing scientific evidence and intelligence reports suggesting the lab-leak theory deserved serious consideration.
A FOIA’d email from February 2020 strongly suggested that Collins and Dr. Anthony Fauci, then-director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, were aware of the gain-of-function research behind the emerging COVID-19 pandemic. Fauci wrote, “?? Serial passage in ACE2-transgenic mice.”
Collins conspired with Fauci to discredit the lab-leak theory through the now-infamous Proximal Origin paper.
It wasn’t until January 2024 during a closed-door interview with the U.S. House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic that Collins finally admitted what he knew all along: SARS-CoV-2 could have leaked from a lab and it was not a conspiracy theory.
Despite the common knowledge of the likelihood of a lab leak, disclosed documents show that people like Tabak continued to deny it:
It always has been unclear whether Tabak's non-answers and false answers have been attributable to ignorance or to willful obstruction. (He is as dumb as a rock, making ignorance a real possibility.)
— Richard H. Ebright (@R_H_Ebright) July 26, 2024
Documents also show the U.S. Department of State by 2019 had knowledge of and cleared the EcoHealth-funded experiments at the Wuhan Lab:
From the new FOIA release by @JamesCTobias. State Department approval for NIH grant by @EcoHealthNYC
🔴Humanized mice
🔴5-6 Novel SARS-related coronaviruses
🔴"All work involving samples and viral isolates from bats
will be performed at the Wuhan Institute of Virology" https://t.co/anXSVlIXdY pic.twitter.com/fnudV4XaYJ— Louis R Nemzer (@BiophysicsFL) April 2, 2023
Adding to the controversy, a FOIA’d document from June 2020 (see page 164) shows that Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) was likely aware of rumors that EcoHealth’s grant-funded work was being conducted in a Biosafety Level 2 (BSL-2) lab at the Wuhan Institute, despite the risky nature of the research, which typically requires a BSL-4 facility.
NIH ‘a rogue agency’
Thacker’s investigation points to broader issues within the NIH and its evasion of public records laws.
“The National Institutes of Health is a rogue agency,” Thacker wrote. He noted that since the beginning of the pandemic, “The NIH has put up roadblocks to Freedom of Information Act requests, forcing people to sue the agency until they disclose documents, which they then heavily redact.”
U.S. Right To Know agreed:
Our investigation into #COVID_19 origins "is a test case of citizens’ access to government records. If we can’t successfully use our nation’s public records laws to investigate something as important as the cause for the deaths of nearly 1.2 million Americans, then why bother…
— U.S. Right To Know (@USRightToKnow) March 20, 2024
In May, Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, announced an investigation into “a potential conspiracy at the highest levels” of NIH to evade FOIA and avoid public transparency on issues related to the pandemic.
The revelations about the NIH’s handling of congressional inquiries come amid other controversies involving key figures in the pandemic response.
“Senator Rand Paul has sent two [criminal] referrals to the Department of Justice after catching Anthony Fauci lying under oath about funding he provided to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for dangerous gain-of-function virus research,” Thacker wrote.
Thacker highlighted May 2024 House investigations of “Fauci’s right-hand man” Dr. David Morens, who admitted to deleting communications and using private email with Fauci to hide public records related to the pandemic origins.
The departure of key figures involved in the controversies also raised eyebrows. Thacker noted that Hallett — the NIH staffer who suggested evading congressional questions — after leaving NIH joined the biotechnology company Cambrian Bio as vice president of global policy.
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