“Intelligence community leaders and senior analysts downplayed the possibility that the Covid pandemic originated as a result of a lab incident.”
CIA whistleblower James E. Erdman III testified before the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday, telling lawmakers that Dr. Anthony Fauci played an "intentional" role in a cover-up of the Covid virus' origins, and that the CIA retaliated against analysts who supported the lab leak hypothesis.
Erdman, a CIA senior operations officer who also served in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s Director’s Initiatives Group (DIG), told lawmakers, "Intelligence community leaders and senior analysts downplayed the possibility that the Covid pandemic originated as a result of a lab incident," and that the intelligence community’s (IC) actions "resulted in cover up, wasted resources, and a failure to properly inform policymakers."
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He said he was responsible for leading the DIG investigation into "Covid origins, anomalous health incidents, and unidentified anomalous phenomena" during his time in the group between March 2025 and April 2026.
He said that the role of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), in the cover-up "was intentional." He said Fauci "influenced the analytical process and findings by leveraging his position to ensure the IC consulted with a conflicted list of curated subject matter experts, public health officials and scientists."
Some of those scientists included those who were part of the Biological Sciences Experts Group (BSEG), an Office of the Director of National Intelligence advisory body, whose members "often receive considerable funding from NIAID and public health agencies." These BSEG scientists "influenced" national laboratory research, policy decisions, analysis, and "other intelligence matters," creating "misaligned incentives and conflicts of interest, as well as counterintelligence issues."
Erdman testified that analysts "responsible for examining the origin of Covid made decisions inconsistent with the conclusions of subject matter experts and analytical tradecraft, consistently favoring zoonosis, or natural origin."
"Following the CIA’s Covid relook that culminated in 2023, the CIA retaliated against analysts supporting the lab hypothesis," he said, later adding, "CIA managers retaliated against them for their refusal to agree with management's middle-of-the-night anonymous rewrite of the analysis, which changed the assessment to a non-call judgment."
He also testified that the CIA "did not comply with lawful oversight during the DIG's investigation," which "significantly impacted" Director Tulsi Gabbard’s implementation of executive orders. "The CIA illegally monitored the computer and phone usage of DIG personnel, their investigations, and contact with whistleblowers. These were Americans being spied upon illegally while executing duties directed by the President and under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence."
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