Federal investigations into the origins of the COVID-19 virus were plagued by improper influence, conflicts of interest, retaliation against analysts, and evasion of oversight, according to whistleblower testimony offered under oath on Wednesday before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. In 2023, after re-examining the evidence, the CIA remained undecided between the natural origin hypothesis and the lab-leak origin hypothesis — a conclusion career CIA operations officer James Erdman III said was not warranted by the evidence.

Erdman, who led the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Director Initiatives Group (DIG) investigation into COVID’s origin, blamed former COVID czar Anthony Fauci and CIA management figures for putting their thumb on the scale of intelligence assessments.

“Dr. Fauci’s role in the cover-up was intentional,” he insisted. “Dr. Fauci influenced the analytical process and findings by leveraging his position to ensure the IC [intelligence community] consulted with a conflicted list of curated subject matter experts, public health officials, and scientists.”

The expert list provided by Fauci largely consisted of associates who had been in his “orbit” for the past two decades, Erdman alleged. “Some of the scientists were part of the Biological Sciences Experts Group [BSEG] … whose members often receive considerable funding from NIAID,” the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, then run by Fauci.

These BSEG scientists “influenced national laboratory WMD research, policy decisions, finished analysis, and other intelligence matters, creating misaligned incentives and conflicts of interest,” Erdman explained. However, “there was no oversight monitoring how this web of relationships influenced research, policy, and public health in any holistic way.” Some BSEG scientists “even worked with Chinese scientists on coronavirus and other pathogen studies pursuing vaccines.”

Furthermore, “several of the BSEG scientists helped Dr. Fauci rewrite definitions of gain of function in 2015 to lift a funding pause on dangerous research,” Erdman continued. “Others participated in Planning Event 201 in 2019. This was a coronavirus pandemic tabletop exercise curiously similar to the events that played out during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it was attended by Dr. Fauci and individuals with IC ties.”

In addition to financial conflicts of interest, some of the scientific experts Fauci pressed on the intelligence community for assessing COVID’s origins may also have had an incentive to cover their own tracks for dabbling in dangerous gain-of-function research.

Besides Fauci and his cadre of scientists, Erdman also faulted “the CIA and DNI analytic managers responsible for examining the origin of COVID,” saying they “made decisions inconsistent with the conclusions of subject matter experts and analytical tradecraft.” Instead of following the evidence, these managers made decisions “consistently favoring the theory of ‘zoonosis,’ or natural origin.”

This practice by management met with internal opposition at the CIA. “The analysts that supported the 2023 lab leak conclusion took every administrative measure available to them to address their deep concerns regarding the analytic integrity of their finished intelligence,” said Erdman. “CIA managers retaliated against them for their refusal to agree with management’s middle-of-the-night anonymous rewrite of the analysis, which changed the assessment to a ‘non-call’ judgment.”

In 2022 and 2023, at least eight different U.S. intelligence agencies conducted their own independent reviews of the evidence regarding the origins of COVID-19. As of February 2023, the FBI and Energy Department concluded a lab leak was most likely, four (unidentified) agencies leaned toward natural origins, and two agencies (including the CIA) remained officially undecided.

Erdman’s testimony suggests that the evidence available to the CIA supported the lab-leak hypothesis, but that CIA management overrode their analysts and changed the agency’s official position to the “non-call” position. Publicly, the Biden administration threw its weight behind the natural origin hypothesis, reasoning that a lab leak, with potential American involvement, might cause too many people to question its vaccine totalitarianism.

Furthermore, if the politicized process Erdman described at the CIA occurred in the four intelligence agencies favoring a natural origin, it could call the credibility of their verdicts into doubt.

None of the assessments by intelligence agencies on COVID origins have been made fully public. However, in April 2023, Senate Republicans released a 301-page report on COVID origins which found that “one or possibly two” lab leaks were the “most likely” explanation of the available evidence.

Finally, Erdman raised ongoing concerns with CIA conduct, alleging that the agency “did not comply with lawful oversight during the DIG’s investigation,” when DNI Tulsi Gabbard sought to get to the bottom of the COVID origins question, on President Trump’s orders.

“The CIA refused to provide information necessary to understand why analytical standards at the CIA were violated,” Erdman said. “The CIA illegally monitored the computer and phone usage of DIG personnel, their investigations, and contact with whistleblowers.”

“These were Americans, being spied upon illegally” — by the CIA! — “while executing duties directed by the president and under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence,” he said. “One CIA contractor assisting with the DIG’s investigation into the events that transpired between 2022 and 2023 was fired by the CIA one day after meeting with the DIG.”

“Intentional or not, the IC’s actions resulted in a cover-up, wasted resources, and a failure to properly inform policymakers,” Erdman summarized. “Public health policy would have been very different had the American public been made aware that a virus from a lab in China was going to serve as the foundation for an emergency-use authorization mRNA product being mandated by the former administration.”

Erdman’s presentation depicts the Biden administration’s response to the question of COVID-19 origins as preeminently unscientific. Instead of following the evidence, senior agency officials steered the investigations toward pre-determined conclusions, according to Erdman.

If there is another side to this story, it did not surface at the hearing, for the simple reason that no Democratic members of the committee showed up. They brought no hard questions for Erdman, nor any defense of the Biden administration’s actions. Perhaps their very absence suggests they had no defense to offer.