Serious allegations have been raised against former top US epidemiologist Dr Anthony Fauci of suppressing the “lab-leak” theory of the origin of the coronavirus and influencing US intelligence agencies. On Thursday (18 June), the outgoing Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Tulsi Gabbard, made the claims by releasing a number of documents and internal messages.
According to DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s claim, Dr Fauci, in collusion with career officers of the national intelligence agencies during the pandemic, tried to conceal the virus’s laboratory-based origin and information about the controversial, US-funded virology research conducted in Wuhan, China.
Fauci, however, had previously directly denied any discussion of the matter with intelligence officials in testimony to the US Congress. He was the chief health adviser to then-President Joe Biden.
Citing the released documents, the US intelligence office claimed that, before the COVID-19 pandemic began, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), led by Dr Anthony Fauci, had provided millions of US dollars in funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China for a highly risky “gain-of-function” project on bat coronaviruses.
The intelligence report claimed that it was from this unintended and uncontrolled lab leak that the pandemic essentially spread around the world, causing the deaths of millions of people.
Based on hundreds of newly released emails and documents, Tulsi Gabbard alleged that Dr Fauci played three main roles during the pandemic to conceal his controversial research, including:
1. Keeping funding flowing: smoothing the path for risky coronavirus research while connected to the trillion-dollar global vaccine trade.
2. Influencing intelligence: using scientists of his choosing to convince intelligence agencies that the coronavirus’s origin was entirely natural or animal-borne.
3. Controlling information: posing publicly as the pandemic’s chief spokesperson or “expert” while silencing and censoring scientists who supported the lab-leak theory.
DNI Tulsi Gabbard said: “The American people have been subjected to lies, censorship and concealment of the truth for years. Unelected and politically influenced bureaucrats like Fauci manipulated or influenced intelligence to hide their own wrongdoing, lied to Congress and blocked accurate information from reaching the elected president.”
The intelligence office claims that the documents now released directly contradict the testimony Dr Fauci gave at a 2024 hearing of the US House Select Subcommittee formed to determine the origin of the coronavirus.
At that hearing, under oath, Fauci claimed he had had no institutional discussion with US intelligence agencies such as the CIA, FBI or DIA about virus research during the pandemic or before and after it. But the current documents prove that there was regular communication between Fauci and intelligence officials on the matter.
Retaliation against whistleblowers
DNI Gabbard’s office said that, under President Donald Trump’s directive for “maximum disclosure and transparency,” US intelligence teams had been working on these documents for the past year. Several whistleblowers gave testimony in the process.
They said that within the intelligence agencies, those who had presented scientific data and intelligence analysis in favour of the lab-leak theory, beyond natural origin, were put under psychological pressure. There were even cases of their promotions being blocked or of dismissal. Gabbard has sent these reports to the intelligence community’s inspector general (IG) for an independent investigation.
Tulsi Gabbard had earlier said that the United States had historically funded more than 120 biological laboratories in more than 30 countries around the world. These included highly controversial “gain-of-function” experiments. Such complex research was conducted under very nominal or minimal oversight.
Extreme polarisation and debate over the origin of the coronavirus in US political and scientific circles is long-standing. During the Biden administration, US intelligence agencies partly supported both the lab-leak theory and the natural-origin theory. But analysts believe these public allegations and the release of declassified documents by the Trump administration’s current intelligence chief, Tulsi Gabbard, will multiply the legal and political pressure on Dr Fauci and the former health administration.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report