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Six of seven technical experts backed the lab leak theory. Then came the 1:53 a.m. edit — and the conclusion became “we may never precisely know the origin of SARS-CoV-2”.

A decorated CIA senior operations officer has testified under oath before the US Senate that intelligence officials buried, rewrote and suppressed evidence pointing to a Wuhan laboratory origin of COVID-19 — and that Dr Anthony Fauci steered the process using a hand-picked circle of conflicted scientists.

James E. Erdman III led the Director’s Initiatives Group (DIG), a Trump administration transparency task force formed under Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. He told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on 13 May that the CIA “obstructed lawful oversight” of the DIG’s work and retaliated against its members.

“The CIA illegally monitored the computer and phone usage of DIG personnel, their investigations and contact with whistleblowers,” Erdman said.

“These were Americans being spied upon illegally while executing duties directed by the president.”

Erdman appeared in response to a subpoena issued on 5 May 2026.

The following day, committee chairman Senator Rand Paul and Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations chairman Senator Ron Johnson wrote formally to CIA Director John Ratcliffe, in which they enclosed Erdman’s full written testimony and demanded no retaliatory action.

No Democratic senators attended the hearing.

The Circle That Shaped the Science

Erdman’s testimony describes a feedback loop connecting public health officials, intelligence advisers and grant-funded scientists. Within this system, the same people reviewed one another’s work, shaped each other’s conclusions, and presented the result as independent expert consensus.

At the centre of that system, Erdman testified, was Fauci.

At two key points — 3 February 2020, at the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, and 4 June 2021, when the IC initiated its 90-day origins review — Fauci provided the intelligence community with lists of recommended scientists to consult.

Those scientists overlapped with authors of the paper ‘The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2’, which publicly dismissed the lab leak hypothesis.

Several had received funding from Fauci’s own agency, NIAID.

“Dr Anthony Fauci influenced the IC’s analytic process and COVID origin’s findings by leveraging his position to ensure the IC consulted with a conflicted list of curated Subject Matter Experts,” Erdman stated.

His claims directly contradict Fauci’s June 2024 congressional testimony, in which he said he was “not qualified” to assess viral origins and had left the matter “to the experts”.

The Biological Sciences Experts Group (BSEG) — an ODNI advisory body operating since 2006 — sits at the structural heart of the problem, according to Erdman.

BSEG scientists simultaneously held positions in academia, received NIAID and USAID funding, collaborated with Chinese scientists on coronavirus research, and provided classified biosecurity advice to the intelligence community.

“There was no oversight monitoring how this web of relationships influenced research, policy and public health in any holistic way for over 20 years,” Erdman said.

Several BSEG scientists helped Fauci rewrite definitions of gain-of-function research in 2015 to lift a funding pause on dangerous experiments.

Others attended the 2019 Event 201 tabletop exercise — a coronavirus pandemic simulation attended by Fauci, whose scenarios closely foreshadowed the actual COVID-19 response.

Analysts Overruled, Retaliated Against

By August 2021, CIA analysts with technical expertise in life sciences were leaning toward a lab leak determination.
Between 12 and 17 August that year, the CIA changed its assessment from a lab incident to a non-consensus determination.

When the CIA conducted a COVID relook in 2022–23, a 10-person team produced a draft assessment supporting the lab leak theory. Six of the seven technical experts on the team backed the lab leak conclusion.

However, CIA management — none of whom were subject-matter experts — anonymously rewrote the assessment at 1:53 a.m., substituting the phrase “we may never precisely know the origin of SARS-CoV-2”.

Erdman noted that “precisely” is not an analytic term; it was “wording intended to dissuade the IC from further inquiry”.

The analysts who supported the lab leak conclusion received a $1,500 exceptional performance award, while at least one non-specialist who favoured the natural origin conclusion received four times that amount.

The Paul-Johnson committee has indicated further hearings are planned.

During the hearing, Erdman called for a legislative commission with power to impose financial consequences on agencies that defy oversight — and for whistleblower protections with genuine teeth.

“Every time the CIA investigates itself,” he told the committee, “they coincidentally find no wrongdoing.”

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Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.