national intelligence tulsi gabbard
© Steven Ferdman/GettyDirector of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard
Newly declassified documents released Thursday by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard show that a U.S. national laboratory assessed the COVID-19 lab-origin hypothesis as a serious possibility as early as May 2020, as well as evidence of U.S.-funded coronavirus research that included planning for spike-protein modifications, receptor-adaptation experiments, and testing in humanized mice in collaboration with researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The documents also prove that Anthony Fauci lied under oath.

The release, issued on Gabbard's last day on the job, includes an eight-page May 27, 2020, assessment from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's Z Program. That assessment concluded that "all of the necessary conditions for an accidental release of a laboratory-modified coronavirus - specifically a coronavirus adapted to recognize human cell receptors - were present at the Chinese Wuhan Institute of Virology in mid-to-late 2019." It assigned equal weight to a laboratory-modification hypothesis and a natural-origin scenario.

assessment from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Z Program


Meanwhile, Recall that while the government was locking us down, Dr. Anthony Fauci and those in his orbit were actively fabricating a 'wet market' narrative that would conceal US research as a possible origin - despite his own advisors initially insisting that COVID-19 looked manmade.

In his January 2024 transcribed interview, Fauci was asked about conversations concerning the same three topics - COVID origins, WIV, and EcoHealth. When asked about the CIA, he answered yes: he said he was briefed "once or twice" in a secure NIH facility and also recalled a briefing in a White House situation room.

The newly released documents then show a June 4, 2021 briefing involving CIA/WCP personnel, NSC officials, and Fauci, during which Fauci offered views on pangolin research, sick WIV researchers, single-lineage vs. multi-lineage evidence, and recommended scientists for the IC to contact. A separate CIA-context email says that same 40-minute secure video teleconfrenece involved CIA/WCPMC officials and that Fauci gave thoughts on the 4 May 2021 COVID-origin briefing and recommended U.S. scientists to consult.
Fauci covid origin briefing
So, he lied.

According to a statement released with the files, "Fauci worked with politicized career leadership in the Intelligence Community (IC) to suppress the truth about his actions, the virus' lab-leak origins, and his role in directing U.S. funding for this dangerous research that caused immeasurable harm and countless lost lives. These documents expose Fauci's direct role in influencing and manipulating IC assessments on COVID-19, and how Fauci lied to Congress in 2024, when under oath he denied knowledge of or participation in discussions with intelligence officials about viral research."

U.S.-Funded Research and Planning for Coronavirus Manipulation

The files include the Year 5 progress report for EcoHealth Alliance's NIH grant 5R01AI110964-05. Under Specific Aim 3, the project outlined plans to:
  • Sequence spike genes from bat coronaviruses.
  • Create mutants to assess how much further evolution would be needed for efficient use of human ACE2 or other receptors.
  • Conduct receptor-mutant pseudovirus binding assays.
  • Perform infection experiments in cell lines and humanized mice.
This research track overlaps with work described in the 2018 DEFUSE proposal, which involved EcoHealth Alliance, Peter Daszak, Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina, and Shi Zhengli's team at WIV. The proposal sought to create chimeric bat coronaviruses with enhanced human infectivity, including consideration of furin cleavage site insertion to improve lung-cell entry, and to test the resulting viruses in humanized mice originally developed in Baric's lab.

A 2016 WIV paper included in the release describes a synthetic shuttle vector system for assembling large DNA fragments, with demonstrated capability up to 31 kilobases. The authors presented the method as a tool for "genome-scale DNA reconstruction," a technique relevant to synthetic biology and virus engineering.

Surveillance work under the same NIH grant reported that 9 of 1,497 rural residents in southern China (0.6%) were seropositive for bat SARS-related or HKU10 coronaviruses.

And from leaked emails three years ago:
Among other things, the NIH helped fund experiments at WIV that infected genetically engineered mice with "chimeric" hybrids of SARS-related bat coronaviruses in what some scientists have described as unacceptably risky research.

...

Andersen laid them out plainly in an email to Fauci that same evening. "The unusual features of the virus make up a really small part of the genome (<0.1%) so one has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of the features (potentially) look engineered," Andersen wrote in the email. "I should mention," he added, "that after discussions earlier today, Eddie, Bob, Mike and myself all find the genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory. But we have to look at this much more closely and there are still further analyses to be done, so those opinions could still change." -The Intercept
Internal Discussions and Awareness of Manipulation Research

A June 8, 2021, internal email in the release references a 2016 New York Academy of Medicine meeting at which Peter Daszak reportedly discussed colleagues in China "manipulating the spike protein on coronavirus to make them more virulent."

Other 2020-2021 emails show officials debating technical concerns, including references to a DOD report on a "suspicious added furin-site" and FBI reporting containing unusual genetic descriptions. One analyst noted the risk that non-experts could misinterpret technical data while still calling for scrutiny. Another observed that "the IC took direction straight from NIH... the people that funded the Wuhan Lab" and referenced "a complex web of money and politics influencing analysis."

Picking Their Reviewer

July 2021 emails concerning the selection of outside reviewers for COVID-origin assessments show officials rejecting several candidates for political sensitivity or conflict-of-interest reasons:
  • James Clapper was viewed as too politically "hot."
  • Anthony Fauci was flagged due to his position as a "customer" of the assessment through NIH funding ties.
  • Michael Morell was considered "too public."
  • Sue Gordon and another individual identified only as "Beth" were also set aside.
And so...

These materials provide primary-source documentation that a U.S. national laboratory assessed a laboratory origin as equally plausible to natural emergence at a time when prominent scientific publications were publicly emphasizing a natural zoonotic source and characterizing alternative hypotheses as conspiracy theories. This includes the February 2020 Lancet letter and the March 2020 Nature Medicine paper "The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2", along with subsequent amplification by NIH leadership.

The research details in the declassified grant reports and proposals involved techniques and modifications - spike-protein engineering, receptor adaptation, humanized-mouse testing, and consideration of furin cleavage sites - that later featured prominently in scientific debate over SARS-CoV-2's characteristics.

Shi and Daszak clinking glasses
Shi and Daszak clinking glasses, undoubtedly after lots of humanized mice successfully died horrible COVID deaths.