According to new records, the principal American collaborator of the Wuhan Institute of Virology took advantage of relationships inside Anthony Fauci’s inner circle to evade federal investigation and maintain the flow of millions of public cash without providing critical data.
Numerous records, including Congressional interview transcripts and emails received through Freedom of Information Act lawsuits or subpoenas, reveal that Fauci’s institute shielded EcoHealth Alliance, which worked with the Wuhan lab on innovative coronavirus engineering and discovery projects.
Fauci portrayed EcoHealth and its president, Peter Daszak, who is currently facing a federal debarment, as small-time and out-of-the-ordinary grantees during a congressional hearing this summer.
However, as word of a new coronavirus began to spread, Daszak asked for extra funding to address the situation, and EcoHealth was one of the first grantees that Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases got in touch with. Daszak was one of the invited specialists on the weekly calls that NIAID started holding in early February 2020 to discuss the novel coronavirus. Additionally, EcoHealth managed to retain the goodwill of NIAID during the height of the pandemic’s confusion and controversy in the summer of 2020, when EcoHealth was granted two new grants totaling $19.8 million. This lessened the power of other officials to obtain information from one of the US government’s few sources of insider knowledge about the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Fauci “asked how Peter is doing, as he often does, and he seemed to commiserate with him to a degree,” wrote David Morens, Fauci’s senior scientific advisor, on November 18, 2021, seemingly referring to Daszak.
At that time, officials at the National Institutes of Health’s main headquarters, known as “Building One,” had halted EcoHealth’s existing NIAID grant at the insistence of the Trump administration. They requested lab notebooks and unpublished genomic data as a condition for restoring funding. This information could have provided insights into coronavirus research in Wuhan prior to the pandemic.
However, thanks to support from allies within NIAID, EcoHealth continued to receive millions in funding. Daszak did not reach out to his longtime collaborators in Wuhan for the information requested by the US government until January 2022—20 months later and two years after the pandemic began.
Daszak’s coronavirus research at Wuhan was initially approved thanks in large part to the assistance of NIAID officials. This included research on gain-of-function, or studies that can increase a pathogen’s pathogenicity or transmissibility. Congressional transcripts also reveal that some of these NIAID officials had spent years defending gain-of-function research as worthwhile of the dangers. According to one email, Morens and another NIAID staffer by the name of “Jeff T.” served as the scientific community’s point of contact with Fauci throughout the protracted discussions over gain-of-function research that preceded the pandemic. Morens and another NIAID scientist, Jeffery Taubenberger, penned an editorial supporting EcoHealth when the epidemic broke, labeling those who were against gain-of-function research as “luddites” and “the complaining crowd.”
Using the same viral samples, EcoHealth intended to use the new NIAID funds to conduct research along similar lines to the work that had brought the group under investigation, according to thousands of pages of grant submissions and other papers obtained by U.S. Right to Know.
The majority of the NIAID staff members who supported Daszak in keeping his funding during the pandemic are still in positions of power there.
The disclosures coincide with the US Senate debating a bill supported by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) that would transfer oversight of the riskiest gain-of-function research from the funding agency, usually NIAID, to an independent panel of scientists who would decide when it is prudent to engineer novel pathogens.
The Department of Health and Human Services started debarment procedures against EcoHealth and Daszak more than four years after the pandemic started, citing issues found by government authorities outside of Fauci’s institution and the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. The organization’s president has not been receiving funding.
Daszak declared that he will challenge the impending disbarment. He has persisted in depending on powerful allies.
“A Supportive Ally in These Initiatives…But Not Too Prominently”
Daszak was among the first scientists contacted by people within NIAID when news first broke of a novel coronavirus in Wuhan.
On January 6, 2020, Daszak had a conversation with Erik Stemmy, his program officer, who was primarily in charge of NIAID’s coronavirus research portfolio.
“Definitely focusing attention on this, Erik,” Daszak wrote. “I spent New Year’s Eve talking with our China contacts and with ProMed staff in between glasses. I’ve got more information but it’s all off the record. Could I give you a call to fill you in?”
But twelve days before, he had ceased getting updates from his colleagues at the Wuhan Institute of Virology on the new infection. Six days before to the world’s announcement of a new pathogen in Wuhan on December 31, 2019, he had received his last communication from Zhengli Shi of the Wuhan lab on December 25, 2019.
By spring, there was intense conjecture that the lab was the origin of the epidemic.
Trump demanded on April 17, 2020, that EcoHealth’s grant be terminated “very quickly.”
A Congressional report states that Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, made contact with the Department of Health and Human Services.
In an effort to terminate and look into the program, NIH Director of Extramural Research Michael Lauer wrote to EcoHealth in the weeks that followed. This culminated in a letter dated July 8, 2020, which suspended all award-related activity.
The letters asked for details regarding the coronavirus research being conducted at the lab under subcontract. Lauer requested that Daszak set up an external examination. The letter requested that “the question of whether WIV [Wuhan Institute of Virology] staff had SARS-CoV-2 in their possession prior to December 2019” be addressed with “special attention.”
Daszak seemed to be annoyed by the fact that Lauer had led NIH’s earlier reaction to China’s Thousand Talents Program’s concerns about intellectual property and fraud.
Daszak asked NIAID for assistance.
David Morens and Jeffery Taubenberger
Daszak relied on the counsel of Morens, a former top advisor to Fauci and a personal friend.
On April 26, 2020, Morens stated, “It’s telling that the determination letter came from ‘Building 1,’ that is, the NIH director’s office, and not NIAID.” “There are things I can’t say, but Tony is aware of them, and I’ve heard that the NIH is working hard to steer this with as little harm as possible.”
In a different email, Morens claimed that NIAID was EcoHealth’s “friend.”
On August 18, 2020, Morens wrote, “I have spent alot of time over the last few months…to try to undo the harm that was done to Peter’s grant, PREDICT, and related things.” “Lots is happening behind the scenes…Given that I work for NIAID, and that Tony Fauci is my boss, I have to be careful and generally talk to reporters off the record, but I think I can say that NIAID, at least, is a friend in these efforts, just not able at this time to be too out front.”
Daszak was instructed to hold off on responding to Building One until EcoHealth had received money for a brand-new, multimillion-dollar project.
Gerald Keusch, the head of Boston University’s maximum security lab’s Collaborative Research Core, declared on April 24, 2020, “this is an affront to science.” Keusch was the Fogarty International Center’s previous director at NIH. “It must be challenged. The question is not only how but also when – certainly not before the EIDRC funding comes through. And then in a smart manner.”
He pledged to rely on powerful connections to speak for him, such as Mary Woolley, President of Research!America, President Maria Freire of the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, and former NIH Director Harold Varmus.
According to grant documentation, Keusch’s lab was scheduled to participate in EcoHealth’s EIDRC project.
Erik Stemmy and Emily Erbelding
When Lauer started to press EcoHealth on April 23, 2020, one of the company’s representatives firmly informed him that “as usual we are in close contact with our program officer Erik Stemmy.”
Daszak’s program officer at the NIAID Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, Stemmy, and the division’s head, Emily Erbelding, spoke with Daszak over Zoom calls regarding his halted research funding and pointed out additional funding sources. For years, Erbelding and Daszak had co-chaired a discussion at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
Daszak’s current grant was in danger, but Stemmy and Erbelding helped him find alternative sources of money and spoke with him on Zoom conversations.
“We are always interested in hearing about your scientific advances,” Erbelding wrote. “I hope that you have seen our rolling [grant] announcements, which might afford you an opportunity to continue progress under another grant number. I know that Erik [Stemmy], Diane, and Alan in the Respiratory Disease Branch would be happy to advise you on a potential submission.”
In June 2017, Zhengli Shi and other scientists from the Wuhan lab were able to visit the institute’s headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland, thanks to Stemmy’s assistance. He served as EcoHealth’s program officer and assisted in facilitating the organization’s gain-of-function research throughout the 2014–2017 hiatus on the majority of coronavirus gain-of-function research. He did not advise that the work be reviewed by the Pandemic Potential Pathogen Committee (“P3CO”), which was established during the pause.
According to congressional testimony, Stemmy was also unaware that EcoHealth had missed the deadline of September 30, 2019, for submitting its progress report detailing its efforts in the months prior to the pandemic’s onset. In response to Lauer’s correspondence, the progress report was turned in on August 3, 2021—after the pandemic had already surfaced and there was strong motivation to withhold information.
Anthony Fauci
Daszak applauded Fauci for his remarks to the media that played down the likelihood of a leak at Daszak’s partner lab; Daszak then brought these remarks up with Fauci’s NIAID staff. Daszak conveyed his deep indignation towards Collins while also expressing thanks for Fauci.
Daszak forwarded to Stemmy statements made by Fauci that were described in the media as “throwing cold water on the conspiracy theory coronavirus was created in a Chinese lab.”
“We’re all very delighted to see that Tony Fauci came out publicly with a comment that dispels the lab origin theory of COVID-19,” Daszak wrote.
Daszak also emphasized remarks made by Fauci to Morens during an interview with National Geographic titled “Fauci: No scientific evidence the coronavirus was made in a Chinese lab.” In that interview, Fauci “stated that he doesn’t buy the ‘accidental lab release’ hypothesis.”
“It’s a very worrying time for us here at EcoHealth, but knowing that you’re all out there working in the background and that Tony’s speaking truth to power is extremely important — a slight relief in a tough week,” Daszak wrote to Morens on May 7, 2020.
After talking with Fauci, Morens gave Daszak some advice via email on October 25, 2021, regarding how he ought to react to Building One. He went via their colleague Keusch to do this because Fauci had told him not to talk to Daszak personally. It was suggested that Daszak get in touch with Stemmy to make sure he agreed with Daszak’s answers to Lauer.
Stated differently, Morens, Fauci’s assistant, suggested to Daszak that he discuss Stemmy’s justification for the delayed progress report with him after speaking with Fauci. Daszak claims there was a technical issue, thus EcoHealth opted not to submit the final year’s report because part of the data was included in a grant extension application.
Continuation of the Status Quo
The new CREID award paralleled EcoHealth’s earlier work, which was clearly visible to Fauci’s inner circle at NIAID. This was precisely the kind of research that had initially frightened the public and the White House.
Morens called the CREID project “PREDICT on steroids” when he spoke with Folkers, Fauci’s chief of staff. The grant EcoHealth received from the U.S. Agency for International Development, called PREDICT, aligned with the team’s efforts for NIAID.
Draft grant reports suggest that the group might have only used samples from its PREDICT program for the experiment.
Obtainable through a FOIA lawsuit, draft grant records detailing the $7.5 million project reveal the group wanted to carry on working with the viruses—viruses from Mojiang, a remote Yunnan county in China—that had partially brought EcoHealth under investigation.
One of the closest known relatives of SARS-CoV-2 was found by the American-Chinese research team in a test cave in rural China known as the “Mojiang mine.” Additionally, a 2012 cluster of respiratory ailments is linked to the mine.
