Emily Kopp, Investigative Reporter<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Senior American intelligence officials concealed classified intelligence that COVID-19 came from a lab from the president and the public, granting Anthony Fauci\u2019s inner circle extraordinary influence while silencing their own spy scientists, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Evidence pointing to a lab leak included signals intelligence collected from Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders in 2019 between Beijing and Wuhan revealing a major emergency, one former official told the DCNF. An increasingly political<\/a> deep state concealed it from President Donald Trump during the first two months of the pandemic, deflecting blame from China as political rival Joe Biden sought to lay responsibility for the pandemic squarely at Trump\u2019s feet. (RELATED: Doc Who Revived Zombie Virus From Frozen Corpse Now Has Keys To Fauci\u2019s Old Agency) <\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Higher-ups continued to dismiss evidence for a lab leak as the fodder for a conspiracy theory and Trump\u2019s hardline stance against China, deceiving millions of Americans about a disease that upended their lives and felled loved ones. Spy scientists at four intelligence agencies and four other government officials spoke to the DCNF on condition of anonymity to reveal previously unreported details about censored intelligence under two presidential administrations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Spy scientists also decoded engineering in the COVID-19 genome \u2014 clues Chinese authorities were powerless to hide, two spy scientists said. But this evidence was conspicuously omitted from public reports released by the intelligence community under then-President Biden, as senior officials instead elevated the analyses of Fauci\u2019s inner circle, who argued the virus was assuredly natural. The omission prompted a formal complaint from one agency, one spy scientist said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard told the DCNF she would hold the intelligence community accountable by working with whistleblowers, reviewing classified material, and investigating where taxpayer funds may have helped create the COVID-19 virus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt is clear that dissenting views were likely silenced to support the Biden Administration\u2019s preferred narrative. Under President Trump\u2019s maximum transparency agenda, we\u2019re committed to exposing the truth so that we can build back trust in the intelligence community,\u201d Gabbard said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some officials responsible remain in government service, including at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), a government official told the DCNF.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CIA Director John Ratcliffe, a longtime critic of the politicization of intelligence about the origins of COVID he witnessed as DNI during Trump\u2019s first term, will hold individuals accountable, CIA spokesperson Liz Lyons told the DCNF.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn his first week as director, he declassified and released CIA\u2019s updated assessment, which confirmed what intelligence, science, and commonsense had indicated for so long\u2014that the likely cause of the pandemic was a lab-leak by China,\u201d Lyons said. \u201cNot only has Director Ratcliffe delivered the vital truth about COVID origins to the American people, he\u2019s also rooted out any politicization of intelligence and held people accountable, and will continue to do so.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n WASHINGTON, DC \u2013 APRIL 05: Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks alongside U.S. President Donald Trump at a press briefing with members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force on April 5, 2020 in Washington, DC. On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a recommendation that all Americans should wear masks or cloth face coverings in public settings. (Photo by Sarah Silbiger\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the winter of 2020, a push for answers from the CCP ran headlong into a coverup led by the official at the top of American biodefense \u2014 Fauci. For decades as the director of the National Institute on Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Fauci oversaw the merging of civilian virus research and anti-bioweapons research, including the coronavirus engineering project at the Chinese military-linked lab in Wuhan. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Fauci\u2019s First Year Of \u2018Retirement\u2019 Was A Money Making Bonanza, Docs Show)<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Fauci was granted a full pardon<\/a> by President Biden on his last day in office, Jan. 20, 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jon Myers, a former director of regional intelligence in the Pentagon for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the DCNF that he could say with \u201c100% certainty\u201d that in the fall of 2019 he had seen intelligence about an incident at a lab in Wuhan when reviewing traffic on the Pentagon\u2019s secret compartmentalized intelligence machine and had included this information in his \u201cread boards\u201d for commanders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But that information never reached Trump\u2019s Presidential Daily Brief in January or February 2020, a former senior White House national security official told the DCNF.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCustomer #1 was getting nothing related to the origins,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meanwhile, Fauci was routinely advising national security officials in the White House Situation Room<\/a> \u2014 meeting with the National Security Council 16 times over the same period, his calendar shows<\/a>. Despite his private concerns<\/a>, Fauci never once mentioned the lab at the pandemic\u2019s epicenter, according to then-Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMy sense is that Fauci had to know all along that the most likely source of the outbreak was the Wuhan laboratory. I was called a conspiracy person. The real conspiracy was the decision to suppress that information from the American public,\u201d Redfield told the DCNF.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Fauci didn\u2019t respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The intelligence community\u2019s (IC) assessment of COVID\u2019s origins was shaped by Fauci\u2019s inner circle, who had their own thicket of conflicts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The IC conspicuously omitted documents<\/a> that some scientists<\/a> liken to a blueprint for generating COVID-like viruses in the lab: A 2018 research proposal involving the Wuhan lab submitted to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) called \u201cDEFUSE.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The proposal was eventually transmitted onto classified servers for dissemination under Biden\u2019s 90-day review of the intelligence in 2021. But its incorporation into IC assessments would have directly implicated one of the intelligence community\u2019s own longtime scientific advisors, University of North Carolina coronavirus virologist Ralph Baric.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Baric wrote the coronavirus engineering experiments<\/a> in the DEFUSE proposal and advised the ODNI<\/a> on biological threats for 16 years as part of its Biological Sciences Experts Group (BSEG), according to his CV<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Baric appears to have advised the intelligence community on COVID despite the conflict. Baric said he advised the \u201cBSEC\u201d about the novel coronavirus in January 2020<\/a>, according to a transcript of a 2023 congressional interview. \u201cBSEC\u201d is likely BSEG mis-transcribed, a congressional investigator told DCNF. Baric privately met with Fauci soon after his January meeting informing the intelligence community<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Under congressional interrogation in 2023, Baric claimed that he had advised government officials in 2020 that a lab origin was possible. Yet public records reveal that in a briefing with congressional aides in February 2020, he never mentioned<\/a> that possibility, instead emphasizing the danger of Chinese wet markets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Baric did not respond to the DCNF\u2019s requests for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Other virologists who briefed the intelligence community on the COVID origins matter had conflicts of interest through their ties to the Wuhan lab directly, or through their involvement in a Fauci-prompted effort<\/a> to contain discussion of the lab leak theory in the media and in the scientific community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another close collaborator of the Wuhan lab, EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak, communicated with the FBI 13 times from 2020 to 2022<\/a> and with Biden\u2019s Office of Science and Technology Policy transition team in 2020, according to a calendar obtained by the DCNF through DRASTIC, an independent research group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two virologists with unresolved conflicts of interest briefed the State Department\u2019s intelligence arm<\/a>, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), in March 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n University of Texas Medical Branch lab director James Le Duc, who inked an agreement<\/a> in 2017 with the Wuhan lab that allowed for the deletion of \u201csecret data,\u201d assured officials that a lab origin was unlikely. Scripps Institute virologist Kristian Andersen, who worked with Fauci<\/a> on a paper describing a lab origin as \u201cimplausible,\u201d said the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Both men had privately met with Fauci before advising the INR: Le Duc had met with Fauci<\/a> on Jan. 23, Fauci\u2019s calendar shows, while Andersen had met with Fauci on Feb. 1 in a secret teleconference<\/a> with a group of health officials and virologists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After they briefed the State Department\u2019s intelligence analysts in March 2020 that a lab origin was implausible, Le Duc and Andersen faced pointed questions from the Deputy National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger, according to two sources present for the meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMy takeaway coming away from that meeting was that not everybody wants to solve this,\u201d one of the officials told the DCNF.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Private chats later made available through FOIA indicated Le Duc<\/a> and Andersen didn\u2019t believe what they had told the IC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe lab escape version of this is so friggin\u2019 likely,\u201d Andersen had said on Feb. 1, 2020<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe reason the FBI got the right answer is that they used their own scientists. They didn\u2019t get briefed by Fauci and Kristian Andersen,\u201d said Redfield. \u201cSame thing with the Energy Department, and guess what, they both came up with the right answer. They didn\u2019t have it filtered through this controlled conspiracy to deny the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Le Duc and Andersen did not respond to the DCNF\u2019s requests for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While Fauci\u2019s inner circle was featured on the New York Times front page<\/a>, research from the government\u2019s most elite virologists and quantitative biologists withered at the bottom of the intel bureaucracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s like keeping a Ferrari in the garage,\u201d one spy scientist told the DCNF. \u201cThe million-dollar question is why. I don\u2019t know what was driving the narrative toward a natural origin.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This pattern emerged across several agencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A trio of scientists at the National Medical Intelligence Center (NCMI) within the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) began by February 2020 to link traces of lab manipulation in the COVID virus to research in Wuhan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The DIA higher-ups were also weighing the genetic analysis pushed by Fauci\u2019s allies in the \u201cProximal Origin\u201d paper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By May 2020, the NCMI scientists had concluded that the paper was deeply flawed<\/a>, documents show. But their rebuttal was rejected by senior officials at DIA as a \u201cscholarly product\u201d and not disseminated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By June 2020, the NCMI scientists had compiled what one official described as a \u201csmoking gun\u201d: Documents, obtained by U.S. Right to Know<\/a> through a FOIA lawsuit, showed NCMI spy scientists had detected signatures of engineering in the genome, and that these signatures pointed back to research proposals from the Wuhan and Baric labs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n DIA higher-ups quashed the analysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Z Division \u2014 Department of Energy (DOE) scientists who advise on foreign weapons programs \u2014 concluded in May 2020<\/a> the genome could indicate a lab origin. But when State Department investigators asked the DOE for an update on their analysis that fall, they were rebuffed, two officials told the DCNF.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of DOE\u2019s national labs conducted analysis on the furin cleavage site \u2014 a string of amino acids in the spike making the coronavirus highly transmissible \u2014 indicating signs of engineering<\/a>, an email shows<\/a>. But DOE Intelligence Chief Steve Black \u2014 whose name is redacted but whose title is shown \u2014 said it was too technical and did not communicate it to the National Intelligence Council.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Black did not return a request for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some working within the National Security Council under Pottinger had homed in on Zhou Yusen<\/a>, a military scientist behind the unusually rapid development of a COVID vaccine. Other officials unearthed more military ties<\/a> by tracking funding from the People\u2019s Liberation Army Academy of Military Sciences, discrediting the assurances of WIV Senior Scientist Zhengli Shi that the lab\u2019s work was only civilian, even as virologists in Fauci\u2019s orbit defended her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Pottinger would soon find himself in the crosshairs of the New York Times and publicly contradicted by the ODNI.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The officials in Trump\u2019s first administration who pushed most vigorously for an investigation into a possible lab origin of COVID and to declassify intelligence received blowback from the deep state and their allies in the legacy press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In early February 2020, Redfield, a virologist, and Pottinger, a former journalist who had reported on the SARS epidemic in China, were poring over binders of evidence that clearly contradicted the narrative that the lab origin theory was a conspiracy theory, Redfield said. Pottinger tasked the IC with digging into both the natural and lab origin theories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By late April, New York Times reporters on the intelligence beat prepared a story smearing Pottinger\u2019s request as pressure to arrive at a predetermined conclusion, emails show<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Communications officials at the DIA, State Department and ODNI prepared a response to refute the Times\u2019 claims, documents show<\/a>. Then-DNI Ric Grenell said in an April 29, 2020 email that the \u201cIC wide statement\u201d would say \u201cwe are down to two options for covid.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the next day<\/a>, ODNI released an inaccurate and oddly premature statement that there was \u201cwide scientific consensus\u201d the virus could not have been \u201cmanmade or genetically modified.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was no input from Pottinger\u2019s group at the NSC, rattling some in the White House, one official said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The statement echoed the dubious assurances of Andersen and Le Duc at the March 2020 State Department briefing, but elided the ongoing scientific debate about the virus\u2019s unusual features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nonetheless, the statement was broadcast widely by the legacy press<\/a>. It has since been deleted<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The same day ODNI released its false statement, the Times published its story<\/a> about Pottinger. It cast him as \u201cconclusion shopping\u201d akin to the runup to the Iraq War. The Times also cited Fauci\u2019s \u201cProximal Origin\u201d paper as evidence of a natural origin. The Times had reported earlier that month<\/a> that the CIA\u2019s experts had not found any evidence of a lab accident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Less than a month later, when Ratcliffe<\/a> assumed the role of DNI on May 26, 2020, he asked to see the underlying intelligence. Ratcliffe learned that the preponderance actually pointed to a lab leak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u2018Customer #1 Was Getting Nothing\u2019<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Fauci\u2019s Favorites<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Spy Scientists Silenced<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The Rush To Declassify Intel And The Deep Staters Who Obstructed It<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nWASHINGTON, DC \u2013 APRIL 05: Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks alongside U.S. President Donald Trump at a press briefing with members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force on April 5, 2020 in Washington, DC. On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a recommendation that all Americans should wear masks or cloth face coverings in public settings. (Photo by Sarah Silbiger\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u2018Customer #1 Was Getting Nothing\u2019<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nIn the winter of 2020, a push for answers from the CCP ran headlong into a coverup led by the official at the top of American biodefense \u2014 Fauci. For decades as the director of the National Institute on Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Fauci oversaw the merging of civilian virus research and anti-bioweapons research, including the coronavirus engineering project at the Chinese military-linked lab in Wuhan. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Fauci\u2019s First Year Of \u2018Retirement\u2019 Was A Money Making Bonanza, Docs Show)<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nFauci was granted a full pardon<\/a> by President Biden on his last day in office, Jan. 20, 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJon Myers, a former director of regional intelligence in the Pentagon for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the DCNF that he could say with \u201c100% certainty\u201d that in the fall of 2019 he had seen intelligence about an incident at a lab in Wuhan when reviewing traffic on the Pentagon\u2019s secret compartmentalized intelligence machine and had included this information in his \u201cread boards\u201d for commanders.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBut that information never reached Trump\u2019s Presidential Daily Brief in January or February 2020, a former senior White House national security official told the DCNF.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cCustomer #1 was getting nothing related to the origins,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\nMeanwhile, Fauci was routinely advising national security officials in the White House Situation Room<\/a> \u2014 meeting with the National Security Council 16 times over the same period, his calendar shows<\/a>. Despite his private concerns<\/a>, Fauci never once mentioned the lab at the pandemic\u2019s epicenter, according to then-Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cMy sense is that Fauci had to know all along that the most likely source of the outbreak was the Wuhan laboratory. I was called a conspiracy person. The real conspiracy was the decision to suppress that information from the American public,\u201d Redfield told the DCNF.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nFauci didn\u2019t respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFauci\u2019s Favorites<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThe intelligence community\u2019s (IC) assessment of COVID\u2019s origins was shaped by Fauci\u2019s inner circle, who had their own thicket of conflicts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe IC conspicuously omitted documents<\/a> that some scientists<\/a> liken to a blueprint for generating COVID-like viruses in the lab: A 2018 research proposal involving the Wuhan lab submitted to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) called \u201cDEFUSE.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe proposal was eventually transmitted onto classified servers for dissemination under Biden\u2019s 90-day review of the intelligence in 2021. But its incorporation into IC assessments would have directly implicated one of the intelligence community\u2019s own longtime scientific advisors, University of North Carolina coronavirus virologist Ralph Baric.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBaric wrote the coronavirus engineering experiments<\/a> in the DEFUSE proposal and advised the ODNI<\/a> on biological threats for 16 years as part of its Biological Sciences Experts Group (BSEG), according to his CV<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBaric appears to have advised the intelligence community on COVID despite the conflict. Baric said he advised the \u201cBSEC\u201d about the novel coronavirus in January 2020<\/a>, according to a transcript of a 2023 congressional interview. \u201cBSEC\u201d is likely BSEG mis-transcribed, a congressional investigator told DCNF. Baric privately met with Fauci soon after his January meeting informing the intelligence community<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nUnder congressional interrogation in 2023, Baric claimed that he had advised government officials in 2020 that a lab origin was possible. Yet public records reveal that in a briefing with congressional aides in February 2020, he never mentioned<\/a> that possibility, instead emphasizing the danger of Chinese wet markets.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBaric did not respond to the DCNF\u2019s requests for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\nOther virologists who briefed the intelligence community on the COVID origins matter had conflicts of interest through their ties to the Wuhan lab directly, or through their involvement in a Fauci-prompted effort<\/a> to contain discussion of the lab leak theory in the media and in the scientific community.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAnother close collaborator of the Wuhan lab, EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak, communicated with the FBI 13 times from 2020 to 2022<\/a> and with Biden\u2019s Office of Science and Technology Policy transition team in 2020, according to a calendar obtained by the DCNF through DRASTIC, an independent research group.<\/p>\n\n\n\nTwo virologists with unresolved conflicts of interest briefed the State Department\u2019s intelligence arm<\/a>, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), in March 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\nUniversity of Texas Medical Branch lab director James Le Duc, who inked an agreement<\/a> in 2017 with the Wuhan lab that allowed for the deletion of \u201csecret data,\u201d assured officials that a lab origin was unlikely. Scripps Institute virologist Kristian Andersen, who worked with Fauci<\/a> on a paper describing a lab origin as \u201cimplausible,\u201d said the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBoth men had privately met with Fauci before advising the INR: Le Duc had met with Fauci<\/a> on Jan. 23, Fauci\u2019s calendar shows, while Andersen had met with Fauci on Feb. 1 in a secret teleconference<\/a> with a group of health officials and virologists.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAfter they briefed the State Department\u2019s intelligence analysts in March 2020 that a lab origin was implausible, Le Duc and Andersen faced pointed questions from the Deputy National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger, according to two sources present for the meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cMy takeaway coming away from that meeting was that not everybody wants to solve this,\u201d one of the officials told the DCNF.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPrivate chats later made available through FOIA indicated Le Duc<\/a> and Andersen didn\u2019t believe what they had told the IC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cThe lab escape version of this is so friggin\u2019 likely,\u201d Andersen had said on Feb. 1, 2020<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cThe reason the FBI got the right answer is that they used their own scientists. They didn\u2019t get briefed by Fauci and Kristian Andersen,\u201d said Redfield. \u201cSame thing with the Energy Department, and guess what, they both came up with the right answer. They didn\u2019t have it filtered through this controlled conspiracy to deny the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nLe Duc and Andersen did not respond to the DCNF\u2019s requests for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSpy Scientists Silenced<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWhile Fauci\u2019s inner circle was featured on the New York Times front page<\/a>, research from the government\u2019s most elite virologists and quantitative biologists withered at the bottom of the intel bureaucracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s like keeping a Ferrari in the garage,\u201d one spy scientist told the DCNF. \u201cThe million-dollar question is why. I don\u2019t know what was driving the narrative toward a natural origin.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis pattern emerged across several agencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\nA trio of scientists at the National Medical Intelligence Center (NCMI) within the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) began by February 2020 to link traces of lab manipulation in the COVID virus to research in Wuhan.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe DIA higher-ups were also weighing the genetic analysis pushed by Fauci\u2019s allies in the \u201cProximal Origin\u201d paper.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBy May 2020, the NCMI scientists had concluded that the paper was deeply flawed<\/a>, documents show. But their rebuttal was rejected by senior officials at DIA as a \u201cscholarly product\u201d and not disseminated.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBy June 2020, the NCMI scientists had compiled what one official described as a \u201csmoking gun\u201d: Documents, obtained by U.S. Right to Know<\/a> through a FOIA lawsuit, showed NCMI spy scientists had detected signatures of engineering in the genome, and that these signatures pointed back to research proposals from the Wuhan and Baric labs.<\/p>\n\n\n\nDIA higher-ups quashed the analysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Z Division \u2014 Department of Energy (DOE) scientists who advise on foreign weapons programs \u2014 concluded in May 2020<\/a> the genome could indicate a lab origin. But when State Department investigators asked the DOE for an update on their analysis that fall, they were rebuffed, two officials told the DCNF.<\/p>\n\n\n\nOne of DOE\u2019s national labs conducted analysis on the furin cleavage site \u2014 a string of amino acids in the spike making the coronavirus highly transmissible \u2014 indicating signs of engineering<\/a>, an email shows<\/a>. But DOE Intelligence Chief Steve Black \u2014 whose name is redacted but whose title is shown \u2014 said it was too technical and did not communicate it to the National Intelligence Council.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBlack did not return a request for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSome working within the National Security Council under Pottinger had homed in on Zhou Yusen<\/a>, a military scientist behind the unusually rapid development of a COVID vaccine. Other officials unearthed more military ties<\/a> by tracking funding from the People\u2019s Liberation Army Academy of Military Sciences, discrediting the assurances of WIV Senior Scientist Zhengli Shi that the lab\u2019s work was only civilian, even as virologists in Fauci\u2019s orbit defended her.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBut Pottinger would soon find himself in the crosshairs of the New York Times and publicly contradicted by the ODNI.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Rush To Declassify Intel And The Deep Staters Who Obstructed It<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThe officials in Trump\u2019s first administration who pushed most vigorously for an investigation into a possible lab origin of COVID and to declassify intelligence received blowback from the deep state and their allies in the legacy press.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn early February 2020, Redfield, a virologist, and Pottinger, a former journalist who had reported on the SARS epidemic in China, were poring over binders of evidence that clearly contradicted the narrative that the lab origin theory was a conspiracy theory, Redfield said. Pottinger tasked the IC with digging into both the natural and lab origin theories.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBy late April, New York Times reporters on the intelligence beat prepared a story smearing Pottinger\u2019s request as pressure to arrive at a predetermined conclusion, emails show<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nCommunications officials at the DIA, State Department and ODNI prepared a response to refute the Times\u2019 claims, documents show<\/a>. Then-DNI Ric Grenell said in an April 29, 2020 email that the \u201cIC wide statement\u201d would say \u201cwe are down to two options for covid.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nBut the next day<\/a>, ODNI released an inaccurate and oddly premature statement that there was \u201cwide scientific consensus\u201d the virus could not have been \u201cmanmade or genetically modified.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nThere was no input from Pottinger\u2019s group at the NSC, rattling some in the White House, one official said.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe statement echoed the dubious assurances of Andersen and Le Duc at the March 2020 State Department briefing, but elided the ongoing scientific debate about the virus\u2019s unusual features.<\/p>\n\n\n\nNonetheless, the statement was broadcast widely by the legacy press<\/a>. It has since been deleted<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe same day ODNI released its false statement, the Times published its story<\/a> about Pottinger. It cast him as \u201cconclusion shopping\u201d akin to the runup to the Iraq War. The Times also cited Fauci\u2019s \u201cProximal Origin\u201d paper as evidence of a natural origin. The Times had reported earlier that month<\/a> that the CIA\u2019s experts had not found any evidence of a lab accident.<\/p>\n\n\n\nLess than a month later, when Ratcliffe<\/a> assumed the role of DNI on May 26, 2020, he asked to see the underlying intelligence. Ratcliffe learned that the preponderance actually pointed to a lab leak.<\/p>\n\n\n\nLater, FBI bioweapons experts \u2014 dismissed by others in the intelligence community as \u201coff the reservation\u201d<\/a> \u2014 had concluded the pandemic started from a lab in part through analysis of the virus\u2019s genetic code by the time Biden asked for a 90-day review of the intelligence in 2021, but Biden\u2019s DNI Avril Haines put a lid on it, one spy scientist told the DCNF.<\/p>\n\n\n\nDuring a 90-day review of the intelligence in 2021, the ODNI sent three warnings throughout the intelligence community not to disseminate findings and instead filter them through the ODNI central office \u2014 a contradiction to a recommendation of the 9\/11 Commission to encourage intelligence sharing \u2014 the spy scientist said. As a result, an FBI interview with a former Wuhan Institute of Virology researcher was never available to the other agencies for consideration, the scientist added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emily Kopp, Investigative Reporter Senior American intelligence officials concealed classified intelligence that COVID-19 came from a lab from the president and the public, granting Anthony Fauci\u2019s inner circle extraordinary influence […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13141,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1173,1227,272,445,446,651],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coverup","category-fauci","category-lab-leak","category-policies-politics","category-policy","category-wuhan-labs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13131"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13132,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13131\/revisions\/13132"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"https:\/\/cdn01.dailycaller.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-1209192313-scaled.jpg\"){kind=link}
![<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nFauci didn\u2019t respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFauci\u2019s Favorites<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThe intelligence community\u2019s (IC) assessment of COVID\u2019s origins was shaped by Fauci\u2019s inner circle, who had their own thicket of conflicts.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe IC conspicuously omitted documents<\/a> that some scientists<\/a> liken to a blueprint for generating COVID-like viruses in the lab: A 2018 research proposal involving the Wuhan lab submitted to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) called \u201cDEFUSE.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe proposal was eventually transmitted onto classified servers for dissemination under Biden\u2019s 90-day review of the intelligence in 2021. But its incorporation into IC assessments would have directly implicated one of the intelligence community\u2019s own longtime scientific advisors, University of North Carolina coronavirus virologist Ralph Baric.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBaric wrote the coronavirus engineering experiments<\/a> in the DEFUSE proposal and advised the ODNI<\/a> on biological threats for 16 years as part of its Biological Sciences Experts Group (BSEG), according to his CV<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBaric appears to have advised the intelligence community on COVID despite the conflict. Baric said he advised the \u201cBSEC\u201d about the novel coronavirus in January 2020<\/a>, according to a transcript of a 2023 congressional interview. \u201cBSEC\u201d is likely BSEG mis-transcribed, a congressional investigator told DCNF. Baric privately met with Fauci soon after his January meeting informing the intelligence community<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nUnder congressional interrogation in 2023, Baric claimed that he had advised government officials in 2020 that a lab origin was possible. Yet public records reveal that in a briefing with congressional aides in February 2020, he never mentioned<\/a> that possibility, instead emphasizing the danger of Chinese wet markets.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBaric did not respond to the DCNF\u2019s requests for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\nOther virologists who briefed the intelligence community on the COVID origins matter had conflicts of interest through their ties to the Wuhan lab directly, or through their involvement in a Fauci-prompted effort<\/a> to contain discussion of the lab leak theory in the media and in the scientific community.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAnother close collaborator of the Wuhan lab, EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak, communicated with the FBI 13 times from 2020 to 2022<\/a> and with Biden\u2019s Office of Science and Technology Policy transition team in 2020, according to a calendar obtained by the DCNF through DRASTIC, an independent research group.<\/p>\n\n\n\nTwo virologists with unresolved conflicts of interest briefed the State Department\u2019s intelligence arm<\/a>, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), in March 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\nUniversity of Texas Medical Branch lab director James Le Duc, who inked an agreement<\/a> in 2017 with the Wuhan lab that allowed for the deletion of \u201csecret data,\u201d assured officials that a lab origin was unlikely. Scripps Institute virologist Kristian Andersen, who worked with Fauci<\/a> on a paper describing a lab origin as \u201cimplausible,\u201d said the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBoth men had privately met with Fauci before advising the INR: Le Duc had met with Fauci<\/a> on Jan. 23, Fauci\u2019s calendar shows, while Andersen had met with Fauci on Feb. 1 in a secret teleconference<\/a> with a group of health officials and virologists.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAfter they briefed the State Department\u2019s intelligence analysts in March 2020 that a lab origin was implausible, Le Duc and Andersen faced pointed questions from the Deputy National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger, according to two sources present for the meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cMy takeaway coming away from that meeting was that not everybody wants to solve this,\u201d one of the officials told the DCNF.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPrivate chats later made available through FOIA indicated Le Duc<\/a> and Andersen didn\u2019t believe what they had told the IC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cThe lab escape version of this is so friggin\u2019 likely,\u201d Andersen had said on Feb. 1, 2020<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cThe reason the FBI got the right answer is that they used their own scientists. They didn\u2019t get briefed by Fauci and Kristian Andersen,\u201d said Redfield. \u201cSame thing with the Energy Department, and guess what, they both came up with the right answer. They didn\u2019t have it filtered through this controlled conspiracy to deny the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nLe Duc and Andersen did not respond to the DCNF\u2019s requests for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSpy Scientists Silenced<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nWhile Fauci\u2019s inner circle was featured on the New York Times front page<\/a>, research from the government\u2019s most elite virologists and quantitative biologists withered at the bottom of the intel bureaucracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s like keeping a Ferrari in the garage,\u201d one spy scientist told the DCNF. \u201cThe million-dollar question is why. I don\u2019t know what was driving the narrative toward a natural origin.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nThis pattern emerged across several agencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\nA trio of scientists at the National Medical Intelligence Center (NCMI) within the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) began by February 2020 to link traces of lab manipulation in the COVID virus to research in Wuhan.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe DIA higher-ups were also weighing the genetic analysis pushed by Fauci\u2019s allies in the \u201cProximal Origin\u201d paper.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBy May 2020, the NCMI scientists had concluded that the paper was deeply flawed<\/a>, documents show. But their rebuttal was rejected by senior officials at DIA as a \u201cscholarly product\u201d and not disseminated.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBy June 2020, the NCMI scientists had compiled what one official described as a \u201csmoking gun\u201d: Documents, obtained by U.S. Right to Know<\/a> through a FOIA lawsuit, showed NCMI spy scientists had detected signatures of engineering in the genome, and that these signatures pointed back to research proposals from the Wuhan and Baric labs.<\/p>\n\n\n\nDIA higher-ups quashed the analysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Z Division \u2014 Department of Energy (DOE) scientists who advise on foreign weapons programs \u2014 concluded in May 2020<\/a> the genome could indicate a lab origin. But when State Department investigators asked the DOE for an update on their analysis that fall, they were rebuffed, two officials told the DCNF.<\/p>\n\n\n\nOne of DOE\u2019s national labs conducted analysis on the furin cleavage site \u2014 a string of amino acids in the spike making the coronavirus highly transmissible \u2014 indicating signs of engineering<\/a>, an email shows<\/a>. But DOE Intelligence Chief Steve Black \u2014 whose name is redacted but whose title is shown \u2014 said it was too technical and did not communicate it to the National Intelligence Council.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBlack did not return a request for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSome working within the National Security Council under Pottinger had homed in on Zhou Yusen<\/a>, a military scientist behind the unusually rapid development of a COVID vaccine. Other officials unearthed more military ties<\/a> by tracking funding from the People\u2019s Liberation Army Academy of Military Sciences, discrediting the assurances of WIV Senior Scientist Zhengli Shi that the lab\u2019s work was only civilian, even as virologists in Fauci\u2019s orbit defended her.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBut Pottinger would soon find himself in the crosshairs of the New York Times and publicly contradicted by the ODNI.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Rush To Declassify Intel And The Deep Staters Who Obstructed It<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThe officials in Trump\u2019s first administration who pushed most vigorously for an investigation into a possible lab origin of COVID and to declassify intelligence received blowback from the deep state and their allies in the legacy press.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn early February 2020, Redfield, a virologist, and Pottinger, a former journalist who had reported on the SARS epidemic in China, were poring over binders of evidence that clearly contradicted the narrative that the lab origin theory was a conspiracy theory, Redfield said. Pottinger tasked the IC with digging into both the natural and lab origin theories.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBy late April, New York Times reporters on the intelligence beat prepared a story smearing Pottinger\u2019s request as pressure to arrive at a predetermined conclusion, emails show<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nCommunications officials at the DIA, State Department and ODNI prepared a response to refute the Times\u2019 claims, documents show<\/a>. Then-DNI Ric Grenell said in an April 29, 2020 email that the \u201cIC wide statement\u201d would say \u201cwe are down to two options for covid.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nBut the next day<\/a>, ODNI released an inaccurate and oddly premature statement that there was \u201cwide scientific consensus\u201d the virus could not have been \u201cmanmade or genetically modified.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nThere was no input from Pottinger\u2019s group at the NSC, rattling some in the White House, one official said.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe statement echoed the dubious assurances of Andersen and Le Duc at the March 2020 State Department briefing, but elided the ongoing scientific debate about the virus\u2019s unusual features.<\/p>\n\n\n\nNonetheless, the statement was broadcast widely by the legacy press<\/a>. It has since been deleted<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe same day ODNI released its false statement, the Times published its story<\/a> about Pottinger. It cast him as \u201cconclusion shopping\u201d akin to the runup to the Iraq War. The Times also cited Fauci\u2019s \u201cProximal Origin\u201d paper as evidence of a natural origin. The Times had reported earlier that month<\/a> that the CIA\u2019s experts had not found any evidence of a lab accident.<\/p>\n\n\n\nLess than a month later, when Ratcliffe<\/a> assumed the role of DNI on May 26, 2020, he asked to see the underlying intelligence. Ratcliffe learned that the preponderance actually pointed to a lab leak.<\/p>\n\n\n\nLater, FBI bioweapons experts \u2014 dismissed by others in the intelligence community as \u201coff the reservation\u201d<\/a> \u2014 had concluded the pandemic started from a lab in part through analysis of the virus\u2019s genetic code by the time Biden asked for a 90-day review of the intelligence in 2021, but Biden\u2019s DNI Avril Haines put a lid on it, one spy scientist told the DCNF.<\/p>\n\n\n\nDuring a 90-day review of the intelligence in 2021, the ODNI sent three warnings throughout the intelligence community not to disseminate findings and instead filter them through the ODNI central office \u2014 a contradiction to a recommendation of the 9\/11 Commission to encourage intelligence sharing \u2014 the spy scientist said. As a result, an FBI interview with a former Wuhan Institute of Virology researcher was never available to the other agencies for consideration, the scientist added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emily Kopp, Investigative Reporter Senior American intelligence officials concealed classified intelligence that COVID-19 came from a lab from the president and the public, granting Anthony Fauci\u2019s inner circle extraordinary influence […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13141,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1173,1227,272,445,446,651],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coverup","category-fauci","category-lab-leak","category-policies-politics","category-policy","category-wuhan-labs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13131"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13132,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13131\/revisions\/13132"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"https:\/\/cdn01.dailycaller.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-1210149339-scaled.jpg\"){kind=link}
![<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Rush To Declassify Intel And The Deep Staters Who Obstructed It<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\nThe officials in Trump\u2019s first administration who pushed most vigorously for an investigation into a possible lab origin of COVID and to declassify intelligence received blowback from the deep state and their allies in the legacy press.<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn early February 2020, Redfield, a virologist, and Pottinger, a former journalist who had reported on the SARS epidemic in China, were poring over binders of evidence that clearly contradicted the narrative that the lab origin theory was a conspiracy theory, Redfield said. Pottinger tasked the IC with digging into both the natural and lab origin theories.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBy late April, New York Times reporters on the intelligence beat prepared a story smearing Pottinger\u2019s request as pressure to arrive at a predetermined conclusion, emails show<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nCommunications officials at the DIA, State Department and ODNI prepared a response to refute the Times\u2019 claims, documents show<\/a>. Then-DNI Ric Grenell said in an April 29, 2020 email that the \u201cIC wide statement\u201d would say \u201cwe are down to two options for covid.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nBut the next day<\/a>, ODNI released an inaccurate and oddly premature statement that there was \u201cwide scientific consensus\u201d the virus could not have been \u201cmanmade or genetically modified.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nThere was no input from Pottinger\u2019s group at the NSC, rattling some in the White House, one official said.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe statement echoed the dubious assurances of Andersen and Le Duc at the March 2020 State Department briefing, but elided the ongoing scientific debate about the virus\u2019s unusual features.<\/p>\n\n\n\nNonetheless, the statement was broadcast widely by the legacy press<\/a>. It has since been deleted<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe same day ODNI released its false statement, the Times published its story<\/a> about Pottinger. It cast him as \u201cconclusion shopping\u201d akin to the runup to the Iraq War. The Times also cited Fauci\u2019s \u201cProximal Origin\u201d paper as evidence of a natural origin. The Times had reported earlier that month<\/a> that the CIA\u2019s experts had not found any evidence of a lab accident.<\/p>\n\n\n\nLess than a month later, when Ratcliffe<\/a> assumed the role of DNI on May 26, 2020, he asked to see the underlying intelligence. Ratcliffe learned that the preponderance actually pointed to a lab leak.<\/p>\n\n\n\nLater, FBI bioweapons experts \u2014 dismissed by others in the intelligence community as \u201coff the reservation\u201d<\/a> \u2014 had concluded the pandemic started from a lab in part through analysis of the virus\u2019s genetic code by the time Biden asked for a 90-day review of the intelligence in 2021, but Biden\u2019s DNI Avril Haines put a lid on it, one spy scientist told the DCNF.<\/p>\n\n\n\nDuring a 90-day review of the intelligence in 2021, the ODNI sent three warnings throughout the intelligence community not to disseminate findings and instead filter them through the ODNI central office \u2014 a contradiction to a recommendation of the 9\/11 Commission to encourage intelligence sharing \u2014 the spy scientist said. As a result, an FBI interview with a former Wuhan Institute of Virology researcher was never available to the other agencies for consideration, the scientist added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emily Kopp, Investigative Reporter Senior American intelligence officials concealed classified intelligence that COVID-19 came from a lab from the president and the public, granting Anthony Fauci\u2019s inner circle extraordinary influence […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13141,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1173,1227,272,445,446,651],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coverup","category-fauci","category-lab-leak","category-policies-politics","category-policy","category-wuhan-labs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13131"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13132,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13131\/revisions\/13132"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"https:\/\/cdn01.dailycaller.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-1472133828-scaled.jpg\"){kind=link}