CIA special operations officer James Erdman III appeared publicly for the first time as the whistleblower who blew the lid off CIA scientific analysts regarding COVID origins.
I don’t know for sure, but I wonder if Erdman is the same whistleblower from September 2023.
Leslie has always done a fantastic job covering COVID. She gave me permission to cover Erdman’s remarks, but please check out her previous coverage on the lab leak:
Erdman has authority on the subject because he led the investigation into the origins.
In front of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Erdman laid out how people within the system covered up information about COVID and gain-of-function research.
Erdman pointed out that after 9/11, the U.S. government changed the roles and responsibilities regarding public health and biodefense.
Erdman claimed those changes “have blurred the lines between scientists, the military, and the intelligence community.”
“It has resulted in a deliberately opaque and excessively redundant biodefense research, policy, and financial infrastructure seemingly intended to escalate bureaucratic bloat,” Erdman added. “This is a national security crisis caused by the inability to provide real oversight. The systematic failures associated with muddled boundaries between bio defense and public health and an overly complex infrastructure have been exacerbated by documented efforts to circumvent oversight.”
The most damning line from Erdman’s opening statement: “Dr. Fauci’s role in the cover-up was intentional.”
“Dr. Fauci influenced the analytical process and findings by leveraging his position to ensure the IC consulted with a conflicted list of curated subject matter experts, public health officials, and scientists,” continued Erdman. “This included some of the authors of the paper, The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2, and other public health experts who have been in his orbit for the last 20-plus years.”
This is just insane. You don’t need me to analyze it. Just read his words. It’s long but worth it:
Some of the scientists were part of the biological sciences experts group, or the BSEG, an office, an office of director National Intelligence Advisory Body, whose members often receive considerable funding from NIAID and public health agencies. The BSEG Scientists influence national laboratory, WMD research, policy decisions, finished analysis, and other intelligence matters creating misaligned incentives and conflicts of interest, as well as counterintelligence issues.Since 2006, the BSEG consulted part time on biodefense issues for the IC while conducting government funded research and holding academia positions, as well as maintaining roles in public health institutions and serving as members in the National Academy of Science. They received funding from NIAD and other agencies for vaccine research, USA IDs predict project, the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. It even worked with Chinese scientists on coronavirus and other pathogen studies, pursuing vaccines.There was no oversight monitoring, how this web of relationships influenced research, policy, and public health in any holistic way for over 20 years.In fact, several of the BSEG scientists helped Dr. Fauci rewrite definitions of gain of function in 2015 to lift a funding pause on dangerous research. Still, 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 like former DNI Avril Haines.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.Following the CIA’s COVID relook that culminated in 2023, the CIA retaliated against analysts supporting the lab leak hypothesis. CIA analysts were not bribed. 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.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.Dr. Anthony Fauci influence over the IC’s COVID origin analysis and the witting and unwitting role some BSEG scientists and I see personnel played in the cover up exposed why this issue is of deep concern.Failure to address the United States government’s inability to differentiate between public health and biodefense and the oversight resistant ecosystem of Life Science actors has been fertile ground for increasingly dangerous continental United States gain of function research, as well as similar research conducted in U.S. government supported labs abroad.
Erdman then accused the CIA of spying on whistleblowers and Americans. But the corruption has continued by hindering any investigation:
CIA did not comply with lawful oversight during the DIGs [Director’s Initiatives Group] investigation. The behavior significantly impacted Director Gabbard’s implementation of several EOs issued during this administration and tasked to the DIG. The CIA refused to provide information necessary to understand why analytical standards at the CIA were violated.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 while executing duties directed by the President and under the authority of the Director National Intelligence. One CIA contractor assisting with the DIGs investigation into the events that transpired between 2022 and 2023 was fired by the CIA one day after meeting with the DIG.When the DIG ceased operations, the CIA also took back 40 boxes of JFK files and MK Ultra files being processed for declassification by DNI Gabbard.The legislative and executive branches will continue to be misinformed if this type of behavior is not addressed. The partial solution to dangerous gain of function has already been laid out in executive order 14292, improving the safety and security of biological research.
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