Newly surfaced diary entries and emails show Anthony Fauci reacting sharply to a NIAID-supported Army Ebola aerosol experiment in 2016, questioning why it was performed and arguing its findings should have been classified as Sen. Rand Paul expands his investigation of federally funded high-risk biological research.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom.
WASHINGTON — Newly disclosed records from Anthony Fauci’s tenure as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases show that he privately questioned why U.S. Army researchers had conducted experiments exposing vaccinated monkeys to aerosolized Ebola virus and argued that the work should have been classified after concerns emerged about the animals’ inflammatory responses.
The records were obtained by Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Rand Paul, R-Ky., as part of his investigation into federal funding of potentially dangerous biological research, the origins of COVID-19 and government recordkeeping.
According to a Just the News report, the documents include Fauci’s contemporaneous diary entries and internal communications concerning work performed at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID, at Fort Detrick, Maryland.
“What idiots those guys at USAMRIID [U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases] are,” Fauci wrote in a March 2016 diary entry. “This should have been a classified experiment that never should have been done in the first place.”
He added, “Now I have to speak with the NSC [National Security Council] from the SKIF [sic] tomorrow to pick up the doo-doo and explain why this is an irrelevant experiment.”
The reference to “SKIF” apparently meant a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, commonly abbreviated SCIF, a secure location used for discussing or handling classified information.
The records concern experiments in which nonhuman primates were deliberately exposed to aerosolized Ebola virus, an artificial route of exposure used in biodefense research. Ebola is not normally considered an airborne disease in human outbreaks; transmission typically occurs through direct contact with infected blood or other bodily fluids. Laboratory studies have nevertheless long demonstrated that Ebola can be experimentally delivered by aerosol to animals.
WHO estimates that Ebola disease has an average case fatality rate of about 50%, although mortality has ranged from roughly 25% to 90% in past outbreaks. Comparisons claiming Ebola is a fixed number of times deadlier than COVID-19 are difficult to make reliably because Ebola case fatality and COVID infection or case fatality estimates measure different populations and have varied substantially by place, time, treatment and variant.
The documents say NIAID financially supported the Army work and participated in its design.
“The study was conducted at the Army’s infectious disease institute at Fort Detrick under a NIAID task order, comparing four vaccines in groups of four monkeys exposed to aerosolized Ebola — an engineered exposure that drove the virus deep into the lung in a way natural infection would not,” the Senate committee said in a fact sheet accompanying the material.
The underlying concern described in Fauci’s notes was not simply that the animals had been infected experimentally. The records indicate that researchers observed greater lung inflammation among some vaccinated animals than among unvaccinated animals after aerosol exposure, even though almost all of the challenged animals died.
“During the course of those experiments, the DOD noticed that the animals that were vaccinated had more inflammation in the long [sic] then [sic] those who were unvaccinated even though almost all the aerosol-challenged [sic] animals died,” Fauci wrote in a later entry. “The current experiments were done to find out if this was a real phenomenon and if it was relevant. Again, I believe all of this is important for bio-defense, but has little to do with naturally emerging Ebola outbreaks. Nonetheless, the idea that the vaccine can do harm is now causing people a great deal of concern.”
The records do not establish that Ebola vaccination generally makes naturally acquired Ebola disease worse. Fauci’s own entry distinguished the artificial aerosol challenge from naturally emerging Ebola outbreaks, and the small animal groups described in the committee material were part of experimental biodefense research rather than a human vaccine-effectiveness trial.
At the time, the United States and international health organizations were responding to the aftermath of the devastating 2014-2016 West African Ebola epidemic and evaluating experimental vaccines for use in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.
Fauci wrote that officials from the three countries were “going batshit” amid concern that the United States might be preparing to use vaccines that were ineffective or potentially harmful.
That concern appears to have shaped Fauci’s reaction to the Army’s handling of the research.
The records show him criticizing “the foolish DOD people” for distributing information about the experiments through government channels and U.S. embassies. He also wrote that the findings “could indicate a vulnerability,” according to the communications described in the report.
Paul argues that those remarks show federal officials were more interested in restricting access to troubling information than questioning whether the research should have occurred.
“These records show NIAID was funding risky research with the Defense Department, and when the results turned problematic, Dr. Fauci argued they should have been classified,” Paul said.”The email he sent demanding answers went to his longtime special assistant, who has since declined to answer the Committee’s questions.
“Americans deserve to know what kind of risky research their taxpayer dollars are funding. It is clear additional oversight is needed into what Dr. Fauci’s institute was paying for long before COVID,” he added. “This is exactly why Congress should pass the Risky Research Review Act. Under my bill, an independent board of outside scientists would have to review research like this before a single taxpayer dollar went out the door.“
Paul’s statements represent his interpretation of the records and his case for additional legislation. The documents show Fauci objecting to the experiment and its dissemination, but the broader question of why classification was discussed and what information legally qualified for classification would involve separate national-security determinations.
Paul’s committee plans to make the underlying material available publicly. The document package cited in the report is available as the Senate investigative release.
Days after learning that NIAID funding was connected to the aerosol work, Fauci demanded a complete accounting from his staff ahead of his discussions with national-security officials.
“I have to meet with the NSC people later this AM. And so, please, please make sure that you or the people from whom you get this information tell me the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Do not tell me what you think I want to hear or hold back what you think will upset me. No one will get hurt if they made a mistake, but then they told me the truth,” Fauci wrote. “If someone does not tell me the truth and I find out they did not, then they are gone.”
The exchange is now drawing particular attention from Paul because the email was directed to a longtime Fauci assistant whom the committee has sought to question as part of its wider investigation.
The committee’s scrutiny extends beyond the Ebola experiments. Paul says investigators are examining additional evidence concerning possible destruction of government records, as well as federal involvement in high-risk virus research.
Those allegations remain part of an ongoing congressional investigation and have not by themselves established criminal wrongdoing by Fauci.
The Ebola experiment described in the records also should not automatically be classified as gain-of-function research merely because researchers aerosolized a virus.
Aerosol challenge studies expose animals to a pathogen through the respiratory system to examine disease or test medical countermeasures. Gain-of-function is a broader and sometimes disputed scientific term generally involving experiments that alter biological agents in ways that give them new or enhanced characteristics. The Trump administration’s current policy specifically regulates research expected to increase dangerous characteristics such as pathogenicity or transmissibility.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order restricting federal support for dangerous gain-of-function research in May 2025.
Executive Order 14292 directed federal agencies to end funding for dangerous gain-of-function work by foreign entities in countries of concern or places where U.S. officials determine oversight is inadequate. It also ordered a broader overhaul of federal policies governing dual-use biological research and pathogens with enhanced pandemic potential.
Paul has linked the Ebola documents to another disclosure this year involving U.S.-funded biological laboratories overseas.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said in June that declassified intelligence showed longstanding U.S. government funding for more than 120 biological laboratories in more than 30 countries, a disclosure covered in an earlier report on the overseas laboratory network.
ODNI said many of those facilities had worked with hazardous or highly contagious pathogens and that some had been involved in research the agency characterized as dangerous gain-of-function work. Those descriptions were assertions by the intelligence office based on the records it released and do not mean all of the more than 120 facilities performed gain-of-function research.
The 2016 Ebola communications contain another passage that has attracted Paul’s attention because of its reference to a planned “CoV” study.
“In the interim, however, we will continue to make plans to initiate the CoV study as soon as the lights turn green,” NIAID scientist Peter Jahrling wrote.
The correspondence supplied with the investigation does not establish what particular project “CoV” referred to.
Coronavirus research was already a significant area of infectious-disease study at the time. Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, or MERS-CoV, had been identified after the 2012 MERS outbreak, and scientists were studying coronaviruses carried by bats and their ability to infect other species. In March 2016, researchers reported evidence that SARS-like coronaviruses circulating in Chinese bats had characteristics relevant to potential human spillover.
The committee has not established from the quoted line alone that the “CoV study” had any connection to SARS-CoV-2, which was not identified until years later.
Paul’s investigation has increasingly focused on Fauci personally.
Fauci appeared under subpoena before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on July 29 and repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination rather than answer questions concerning the federal pandemic response and virus research.
A Republican-led committee later advanced a contempt resolution against him. The proceedings and dispute over his refusal to answer are detailed in PBS coverage of the contempt action.
The committee approved the resolution along party lines, and Paul urged the Justice Department to consider criminal prosecution. Fauci has not been convicted of contempt, and the committee vote itself did not determine whether his invocation of the Fifth Amendment was legally invalid.
The dispute is complicated by the pardon Fauci received from President Joe Biden before Biden left office.
The pardon covered federal offenses Fauci may have committed between Jan. 1, 2014, and Jan. 19, 2025, related to his service as NIAID director, a member of the White House coronavirus response teams or chief medical adviser.
Paul argues that the pardon eliminated Fauci’s ability to claim a reasonable fear of federal prosecution for conduct covered by the pardon.
Fauci’s attorneys and other legal scholars dispute that conclusion. They have argued that testimony given after the pardon could create new exposure, including potential allegations involving statements made under oath, and that presidential pardons do not cover state crimes. Legal experts have described the constitutional issue as unsettled. The competing arguments are examined in legal coverage of Fauci’s post-pardon Fifth Amendment claim.
The investigation has also moved toward Fauci’s former staff.
Paul sought a committee resolution allowing the Senate to request a court order granting immunity to a longtime Fauci special assistant, who had declined to answer committee questions by invoking the Fifth Amendment.
Federal law required approval by two-thirds of the committee. The proposal received eight Republican votes and seven Democratic votes against it, leaving it short of the necessary threshold. Paul declined to publicly identify the former aide, saying she had expressed concern about testifying without immunity.
Paul has alleged that the committee has uncovered evidence of document destruction within Fauci’s former operation. Government records generated in the course of federal business are subject to federal preservation requirements, though whether particular records were legally required to be retained and whether any destruction was unlawful remain issues for the investigation.
The newly surfaced Ebola records add a much earlier chapter to that inquiry.
They show that in 2016, years before COVID-19, Fauci was already confronting questions about how federal agencies should conduct, communicate and potentially classify high-risk pathogen research — and was sufficiently troubled by the Army’s Ebola aerosol work to write that it “never should have been done in the first place.”
At the same time, the records also show Fauci describing the research as potentially important for biodefense while arguing that the artificial aerosol challenge had “little to do with naturally emerging Ebola outbreaks.”
That distinction is likely to remain central as Paul’s committee examines whether the episode demonstrates a failure of biological-research oversight, an inappropriate effort to restrict damaging information, or a dispute among federal scientists and defense officials over how sensitive biodefense findings should have been handled.
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