Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) is requesting information from the Defense Department on an investigation they conducted into the origins of COVID-19.
The impetus for Johnson’s request was a report by a Marine major working at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The report was subsequently released by Project Veritas. In it, we learn that EcoHealth Alliance pursued a grant from DARPA in 2018 to study ways to prevent a coronavirus outbreak similar to the Sars CoV-2 coronavirus that caused the current pandemic.
The way they went about it raised red flags at DARPA, and Marine Corps Maj. Joseph Murphy wrote a memo detailing his concerns about the research being conducted by EcoHealth and Dr. Peter Daszak.
The report was covered in detail by PJ Media’s Stacey Lennox on Tuesday.
Daszak and his team, including Dr. Ralph Baric from the University of North Carolina and Dr. Shi Zhengli from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, offered to develop a program to vaccinate bats and increase their immune response to coronaviruses. The goal was to reduce spillover by delivering these vaccines aerosolized into bat caves. To accomplish this, they would manipulate viruses collected in the Wuhan lab to make them infectious to humans and then weaken them to inoculate bats. DARPA had concerns about the safety of this research and denied the application. Eventually, Dr. Anthony Fauci’s division of the NIH funded the team’s work.
Dr. Shi Zhengli — the infamous “Bat Woman” of China — is suspected of doing research for the Chinese military, although the Chinese deny it. The proposed project absolutely screams “dual use” — something that could be militarized as well as used for beneficial research.
Sen. Johnson wants answers from the Defense Department on exactly what Maj. Murphy was worried about.
Daily Caller:
Johnson is requesting that DOD investigate the report and interview the Marine officer who allegedly wrote it, as well as provide a briefing detailing the department’s findings.
“The origins of COVID-19 must be fully investigated. It is apparent that Dr. Fauci has not been forthright with the American people regarding his involvement in funding dangerous research. Throughout the pandemic, our federal health agencies have failed to be transparent and Americans have lost confidence in them as a result. The American people are counting on the Department of Defense to be far more transparent and explain what steps they took to investigate this August 2021 disclosure,” Johnson told the Daily Caller.
Fauci keeps insisting that, going by the strict definition of “gain of function” research, neither his organization, NAID, nor the CDC has ever given money for any project that included manipulating the genetic structure of a coronavirus to make it more deadly.
That may very well be technically true. But Fauci knows exactly what kind of research was being done at the Wuhan lab. He continues to hide behind the dictionary while the Chinese completely stonewall any attempts to find the truth.
What is “the truth”? If the Chinese Communist government knows, they will never say. It’s unlikely that Fauci knows the truth, but he does know that any hint that his organization funded experiments that might have caused the escape of a highly contagious coronavirus would destroy his reputation and career.
The Project Veritas report is hardly a smoking gun that conclusively shows that COVID-19 originated in a lab in Wuhan China. But it seems clear that there were many in government who did not take such a benign view of Daszak’s research at Wuhan and were worried that exactly the kind of pandemic they were trying to prevent had actually happened.
Source: PJ Media
