Sen. Rand Paul’s timeline says Dr. Anthony Fauci communicated with intelligence and national security officials for years before COVID-19 and later engaged with classified briefings during the government’s pandemic origins review.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., released a timeline Thursday outlining what he described as extensive contacts between Dr. Anthony Fauci and the U.S. intelligence community dating back nearly two decades before the COVID-19 pandemic, Just the News reported.
Paul, chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, said the documents show Fauci had repeated interactions with intelligence and national security officials on biological threats, emerging pathogens and chemical and biological defense matters long before SARS-CoV-2 emerged in late 2019.
The timeline also focuses on Fauci’s role in early 2020 discussions over COVID-19’s origins, including the development of the “Proximal Origin” paper, which publicly argued against a laboratory origin for the virus. Paul’s office said Fauci later relayed that same narrative to intelligence officials during the Biden administration’s 90-day review of the pandemic’s origins.
The documents released by Paul state that Fauci’s intelligence-related contacts began years before the pandemic. In August 2003, Fauci reviewed and provided feedback that was incorporated into a National Intelligence Council unclassified paper on the implications of SARS for the United States. He was later thanked by name when the paper was published that month.
In November 2003, according to Paul’s timeline, Fauci received a CIA report titled “The Darker Bioweapons Future,” which warned that advances in biotechnology could enable the creation of more dangerous engineered pathogens.
That same month, Fauci was forwarded a National Academy of Sciences report on biotechnology and bioweapons ahead of a scheduled meeting with the Center for International Security Studies. In September 2003, he had also been invited to participate in an Oct. 1 Threat Reduction Advisory Committee review of the Department of Defense’s chemical and biological defense program direction.
The timeline says Fauci was invited again in September 2007 to participate in an outside expert review panel commissioned by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. The panel, organized by Robert Joseph, then under secretary of state for arms control and international security, and Ash Carter, was tasked with assessing future directions for DTRA’s chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear activities. The panel met in fall 2007, with a report due by February 2008.
Paul’s timeline then turns to the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Jan. 31, 2020, virologist Kristian Andersen alerted Fauci to concerns about SARS-CoV-2’s furin cleavage site, according to the timeline. Paul’s office said Fauci urged Andersen to convene scientists and, if they agreed the virus’s features appeared engineered, to report the matter to the FBI and MI5.
According to The Lancet, the furin cleavage site on the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein distinguishes it from earlier coronaviruses. Cleavage at the S1/S2 boundary can help the virus bypass certain entry barriers, making it more capable of human-to-human transmission.
On Feb. 1, 2020, Fauci joined a high-level scientific call on whether the virus appeared lab-engineered. That same day, the National Academies of Sciences convened experts including Andersen, Peter Daszak and Ralph Baric.
Paul’s timeline says Fauci participated Feb. 3 in a National Academies call on the origins of 2019-nCoV that included intelligence community officials. That was followed by an invitation for Fauci to address the JASON group, an independent scientific advisory body that consults with the government on national security issues.
By March 6, Andersen told Fauci and then-NIH Director Francis Collins that Nature Medicine would publish the “Proximal Origin” paper, which thanked Fauci and Collins for their “advice and leadership.” The paper was published March 17, 2020, and concluded that SARS-CoV-2 was “not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.”
Paul’s timeline argues that Fauci later reinforced that conclusion during the Biden administration’s review of COVID-19 origins.
President Joe Biden ordered a 90-day intelligence community assessment of the pandemic’s origins on May 26, 2021. After that, Fauci received multiple classified briefings and read-ins, according to Paul’s office.
On June 4, 2021, the National Security Council held a classified briefing for Fauci. On June 9, HHS arranged his participation in a highly compartmented Deputies Committee meeting requiring special clearances. On June 21, the NSC provided Fauci with a sensitive “read file” that he was not allowed to remove from the complex.
The intelligence community formally requested relevant information from HHS and NIH on June 28, 2021, according to the timeline.
After a classified reading-room session on July 8, Fauci forwarded the NSC a new preprint by the same authors involved in “Proximal Origin,” describing the authors as “highly qualified virologists” and saying the paper “summarizes what I said yesterday.” Fauci asked that it be shared.
On Aug. 25, 2021, the NSC invited Fauci to review what it called a “very interesting report” on the same topic. Fauci described the report as “important” and planned to read it at the White House, according to Paul’s timeline.
The documents are part of Paul’s broader inquiry into Fauci’s role in COVID-19 origins discussions, federal research funding and the relationship between public health officials and national security agencies.
Paul has repeatedly criticized Fauci’s handling of questions about a potential laboratory origin for COVID-19, while Fauci has denied misleading Congress and has defended his public statements on the pandemic. The latest timeline is likely to fuel renewed debate over whether early scientific conclusions about COVID-19’s origins were shaped by public health officials, intelligence officials or both.
Original article
Comments