WASHINGTON — A CIA whistleblower appeared publicly for the first time Wednesday to testify to a Senate panel that Dr. Anthony Fauci improperly “influenced” intelligence analyses about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic — to downplay findings that it most likely resulted from a laboratory accident in China.
Special operations officer James Erdman III delivered his testimony about the wide-ranging “cover-up” after being subpoenaed by the Senate Homeland Security Committee — and against his own agency’s wishes.
“Dr. Fauci’s role in the cover-up was intentional,” Erdman testified, saying the then-director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) meddled in COVID origins analyses by providing “a conflicted list of curated subject matter experts, public health officials and scientists” to the US Intelligence Community (IC).
Those included several scientists who joined a February 2020 teleconference that ultimately produced a widely-discredited scientific paper, “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2,” downplaying the lab leak theory.
As a result, Erdman noted: “The CIA and DNI analytic managers responsible for examining the origin of COVID made decisions inconsistent with the conclusions of subject matter experts and analytical tradecraft, consistently favoring the theory of zoonosis or natural origin.”
Erdman, who has served at the CIA since 2013, has been reviewing the IC’s handling of its COVID origins probe as part of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s Director’s Initiatives Group (DIG) from March 2025 to April 2026.
He testified that Fauci twice inserted himself into IC deliberations about the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 — once on Feb. 3, 2020, and again on June 4, 2021 — to stoke a natural origins “narrative.”
In a June 2021 email exchange, Erdman recounted how the leader of a 90-day IC review of COVID origins dismissed concerns from a senior analyst about Fauci’s decision to “inject himself” into the process as a “subject matter expert.”
The CIA officer noted that the NIAID director had publicly denied having expertise on coronaviruses while privately attempting to steer the investigation.
In 2023, another CIA assessment also refused to state one way or another whether the coronavirus pandemic originated in a lab leak or spilled over naturally from animals to humans.
Erdman denied reports, however, that some analysts were bribed to alter those findings.
“Six of the seven technical experts say, ‘Yep, we still think it’s a lab leak,’” he characterized the deliberations. “And they were sticking to their guns. Management changed the analytic line.”
The 2023 assessment stated: “We may never precisely know the origin of SARS-CoV-2.”
“‘Precisely’ is not a term analysts use,” Erdman clarified Wednesday. “They use words like ‘low confidence,’ ‘medium confidence.’ ‘Precisely’ is a word you use when you want to deliberately end discussion.”
Those analysts received Exceptional Performance Awards of roughly $1,500 each, the witness said, but not in direct exchange for the assessment’s findings.
“There were no bribes,” Erdman emphasized.
He also accused the IC of withholding as many as 2,000 pages of classified material on COVID origins — in violation of a 2023 law signed by former President Joe Biden ordering disclosures to the American public.
While conducting the review with Gabbard’s office, Erdman alleged that the CIA “illegally monitored” the phones and computers of DIG personnel as well as other whistleblowers.109
“The CIA refused to provide information necessary to understand why analytic standards at the CIA were violated,” he said.
“These were Americans being spied upon illegally while executing duties directed by the president and under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence.”
Erdman came forward “at great personal risk” because “the truth was being buried,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Wednesday of the “decorated officer with decades of intelligence and national security experience.”
As the hearing concluded, a CIA spokeswoman blasted Paul’s committee for having engaged in “political theater” by compelling Erdman’s testimony, given that the agency last year assessed a lab leak as the most likely explanation for the COVID pandemic.
“The Committee acted in bad faith by subpoenaing an Agency officer for testimony today without notifying CIA, despite having already obtained closed-door testimony from the individual previously,” said CIA spokeswoman Liz Lyons.
“The witness testifying today is not appearing as a whistleblower in pursuit of the truth, but instead in response to the subpoena issued by Chairman Paul,” she added.
“This proceeding amounts to nothing more than dishonest political theater masquerading as a congressional hearing. As the CIA has already assessed, COVID-19 most likely originated from a lab leak, and efforts to undermine that conclusion are disingenuous.”
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who has called for a high-level congressional probe of the intelligence agencies regarding COVID, publicly demanded an apology from CIA Director John Ratcliffe after reading the statement aloud during the hearing.