A CIA officer alleging intelligence officials downplayed evidence that COVID may have started in a Wuhan, China, lab and accusing Dr. Anthony Fauci of improperly influencing the government’s review of the virus’ origins testified in front of Congress on Wednesday.
The Hearing
As reported on Thursday’s AM Update, Special Operations Officer James Erdman III appeared, under subpoena, before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee chaired by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY).
Sen. Paul opened the hearing by arguing the COVID origin debate was shaped by a small circle of government officials, scientists, intelligence advisers, and outside experts who he says were presented to the public as independent voices despite overlapping relationships and potential conflicts of interest.
One example? The Biological Sciences Experts Group (B-SEG). The senator argued some of the scientists involved in advising the government had also worked in fields directly tied to the research at the center of the COVID origins fight.
“Dr. Ralph Baric collaborated with Dr. Zhengli-Li Shi in Wuhan to create gain of function coronaviruses. But Dr. Baric was also part of B-SEG and an active consultant to intelligence agencies on the origins of COVID-19 pandemic,” Paul explained. “Likewise, Peter Daszak received hundreds of millions of dollars from the U.S. government and worked with Dr. Shi also on these gain of function experiments. Daszak was even sent to China with the WHO to investigate the origins of COVID. So, the very scientists that were commissioned to investigate COVID were, in some cases, the very scientists who were complicit in the origins of the gain of function experiments that may well have created COVID.”
Sen. Paul also called out Dr. Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, claiming he put his thumb on the scale due to the scope of his work.
“How can Anthony Fauci objectively comment on a discussion of COVID origins when he approved the very funding that may have caused the pandemic virus,” he wondered. “He referred to the idea that the pandemic originating in the lab was a conspiracy… Dr. Fauci convened the now infamous February 1, 2020, call. Some scientists on that call privately raised serious concerns about a laboratory origin. Yet, ironically, those same scientists later co authored the proximal origin paper, which publicly dismissed the lab leak hypothesis. One author received a $9 million grant from Dr. Fauci his own agency, after he changed his opinion from lab leak on the private phone call to natural origin in public.”
The Whistleblower
Erdman, who has worked for the CIA since 2013, spent more than a year reviewing the intelligence community’s (IC) handling of the COVID origins probe as part of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s Director’s Initiatives Group (DIG).
He told lawmakers intelligence leaders and senior analysts downplayed the possibility that COVID-19 began with a lab incident, which shaped not just the government’s intelligence assessment but the public debate over emergency pandemic policies that followed.
“Intentional or not, the IC’s actions resulted in cover up, wasted resources, and a failure to properly inform policymakers,” Erdman alleged. “Public health policy would have been very different had the American public been made aware that a virus from a lab in China was going to serve as the foundation for an emergency use authorization mRNA products being mandated by the former administration.”
According to the whistleblower, Dr. Fauci inserted himself into intelligence community discussions twice, once in February 2020 and again in June 2021, allegedly pushing officials toward a natural-origin explanation.
When Sen. Paul asked Erdman if he believes the shifting scientific consensus “was significantly influenced by Anthony Fauci,” he concurred. “It was significantly influenced by Anthony Fauci’s injecting himself into the IC… particularly during the 90-day study,” he testified. “We have documentation that shows that as of August 12, [2021], the CIA was considering calling this a lab leak… and then that changed on August 17 of 2021. And unfortunately, because the CIA would not provide us documentation that we asked for… we have no idea why that changed.”
The CIA Claps Back
The CIA, meanwhile, has pushed back sharply, saying Paul’s committee acted in bad faith by subpoenaing Erdman despite already receiving closed-door testimony from him. The agency called the hearing “dishonest political theater masquerading as a congressional hearing,” noting it has already assessed COVID-19 most likely originated from a lab leak.
But Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) fired back after reading the statement at the hearing. “I’m calling on CIA Director [John] Radcliffe and this person to apologize to Chairman Paul and this committee,” he said. “This is not political theater. I have years and years and years of built up frustration of agencies like the CIA, Department of Justice, the FBI, HHS, snubbing our oversight, giving us the big middle finger.”
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