A CIA whistleblower told senators Wednesday that Dr. Anthony Fauci’s involvement in what he described as a “cover-up” surrounding the origins of Covid-19 was “intentional.” James Erdman, a longtime CIA operations officer who spent much of the past year assigned to the Director of National Intelligence Director Initiatives Group (DNI DIG), appeared before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
During his testimony, Erdman alleged that Fauci “influenced the analytical process and findings by leveraging his position to ensure the [intelligence community] consulted with a conflicted list of curated subject matter experts, public health officials, and scientists.”
Erdman also claimed that CIA and DNI officials overseeing the Covid origin investigation “made decisions inconsistent with the conclusions of subject matter experts and analytical tradecraft, consistently favoring the theory of zoonosis or natural origin.”
According to Erdman, when the CIA revisited its Covid origin analysis in 2022 and 2023, agency leadership “retaliated against analysts supporting the lab-leak hypothesis,” especially individuals who declined to endorse what he described as “management’s middle of the night anonymous rewrite of the analysis, which changed the assessment to a non-call judgment.”
He further alleged that the CIA obstructed the DNI DIG’s oversight inquiry by withholding information investigators needed to determine why analytical standards had allegedly been breached. Erdman additionally accused the agency of illegally monitoring the phones, computers, investigations, and whistleblower communications of DIG personnel.
“These were Americans being spied upon illegally while executing duties directed by the president and under the authority of the director of national intelligence,” he said.
Erdman testified that the alleged retaliation campaign culminated in the dismissal of a CIA contractor who had assisted the DIG investigation. According to his account, the contractor was terminated one day after meeting with DIG officials.
During the intelligence community’s 2021 effort to determine whether Covid-19 emerged from a laboratory leak or natural transmission, Fauci reportedly supplied investigators with a list of experts to consult. Erdman said investigators later determined the list included scientists who had longstanding professional ties to Fauci spanning more than two decades, as well as authors of a scientific paper Fauci had commissioned to challenge claims that the virus escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China, notes National Review.
Erdman also testified that some scientists Fauci recommended were members of the Biological Sciences Experts Group (BSEG), an advisory panel within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. He noted that those members “often receive considerable funding from NIAID and public health agencies,” arguing that the public health system’s “overly complex” structure created conflicts of interest and weakened oversight.
“The BSEG scientists influenced national laboratory [weapons of mass destruction] research policy decisions, finished analysis and other intelligence matters, creating misaligned incentives and conflicts of interest, as well as counter intelligence issues.”