Pentagon asked for research projects that could have caused COVID, top scientist says

Risky virus experiments that scientists think could have started the COVID-19 pandemic were initially solicited from a research arm of the Department of War, according to congressional testimony from a top United States virologist who has been near the center of inquiries into the origins of the pandemic.Dr. Ralph Baric, a leading coronavirus researcher, told the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee during a closed-door interview this April that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency solicited proposals for gain-of-function experiments in January 2018. Gain-of-function research, which involves manipulating pathogens so they are either more easily transmissible or more deadly, has been at the heart of the debate over the origins of COVID-19 since early in 2020.Baric told committee staffers that the research project he and his colleagues submitted to DARPA for consideration, which would have been done partly in Wuhan, China, could have resulted in the creation of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), now chairman of the committee, has made pursuing the government’s role in funding and organizing gain-of-function research in China at the Wuhan Institute of Virology a centerpiece of his investigations into the origins of COVID-19.On Thursday, Paul released the full 154-page transcribed interview with Baric ahead of his committee’s scheduled hearing next week with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases head and strong proponent of gain-of-function research. During his interview in April, Baric told Senate Republicans that the 2018 DARPA request for proposals was meant to understand “what drives cross-species jumping” in viruses. “Now, if you want to know, down to the nucleotide level, what drives a cross-species jumping event, you are talking gain-of-function experiments,” Baric told committee staffers, according to transcripts released by Paul.Fauci and other U.S. public health officials have maintained that gain-of-function experiments can be done safely and are useful for preparing to make vaccines and other drugs during an emerging disease outbreak. But critics, including Paul, argue that there are no civilian applications for such research. Baric was one of the chief researchers who was to be involved in the so-called DEFUSE project, which Baric and his colleagues submitted to DARPA in 2018. The project would have involved gain-of-function research to add a furin cleavage site to a bat coronavirus, constructing a virus almost identical to SARS-CoV-2.Baric’s colleagues included Shi Zhengli, a top bat coronavirus researcher at the Wuhan lab, and Peter Daszak, president of the non-profit research group EcoHealth Alliance, which has since been debarred from federal funding.DARPA asked for gain-of-function research plans through its Preventing Emerging Pathogenic Threats, or PREEMPT, program, directed to study at least 15 pathogens that could infect U.S. troops abroad. Although DARPA did not fund the DEFUSE project due to security concerns, Baric told Senate Republicans, the project could have been completed by Shi alone at the Wuhan lab.“Research grants are always written in the context of being more fluid than contracts,” Baric said, noting that it is entirely possible Shi and her colleagues conducted the work without U.S. involvement or funding. Baric also testified that he “never ruled out lab leak possibility” because the Wuhan lab is a lower safety level, a BSL-2, compared to his lab at the University of North Carolina, a BSL-3. He said, however, that he still believes it is “most likely” that the virus spread to humans from an animal. Other emails and documents released in June by Paul and former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard indicate that Fauci advised intelligence community officials to consult with Baric and other researchers who discredited the lab leak hypothesis during the early stages of the pandemic when trying to determine the origin of the virus. Paul also publicly released files in October showing that the Central Intelligence Agency and ODNI contacted Baric in September 2015 to discuss a “possible project” on coronavirus evolution, predating his role in the DEFUSE proposal.Paul told the New York Post that he intended to ask Fauci about his efforts to emphasize Baric’s work to the national security community to dissuade the lab leak hypothesis. TIMELINE OF FAUCI’S INVOLVEMENT IN THE ORIGIN OF COVID-19 DEBATE“Dr. Fauci and his virologist allies privately believed that the pandemic may have come from a lab leak but publicly argued that a lab leak was implausible,” Paul said. “They conspired to condemn and demean anyone who argued that the pandemic could have leaked from the Wuhan Lab and never, ever accepted responsibility for the terrible decision to fund this dangerous research in China.” The Washington Examiner contacted the Pentagon for this story.