CIA Whistleblower Reveals How Fauci and the CIA Doctored the COVID Narrative

The CIA retaliated against analysts who supported the lab leak theory and illegally spied on investigators, says the whistleblower

A veteran CIA operations officer told the Senate on Wednesday that Anthony Fauci deliberately steered the intelligence community’s analysis of COVID-19’s origins, that analysts who concluded the virus came from a Chinese laboratory were punished for reaching that conclusion, and that the CIA illegally monitored the phones and computers of government investigators examining the issue.

James Erdman III, who led the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s investigation into COVID origins from March 2025 to April 2026, appeared before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Wednesday to detail what his investigation uncovered — and the resistance it faced from the CIA.

No democrats attended the hearing.

From conspiracy to fact

For much of the pandemic, the lab-leak theory was treated as a fringe and even “dangerous” conspiracy. Under the Biden administration, social media platforms censored and suspended users for promoting it, while scientists and public health officials publicly ridiculed it. Major media outlets aggressively amplified that ridicule while ignoring mounting evidence pointing toward a lab origin.

In January 2025, the CIA concluded that the virus most likely escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, rejecting the theory that it naturally spread from animals at a wet market. The White House has also redirected COVID.gov to a page outlining the evidence for a lab origin.

“A lab-related incident involving gain-of-function research is the most likely origin of COVID-19,” the site states. It also says that “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” — the paper Erdman repeatedly referenced in his testimony — “was prompted by Dr. Fauci to push the preferred narrative that COVID-19 originated in nature.”

Last year, a Rasmussen poll found that 66 percent of Americans believe the virus originated in a lab rather than in nature, including 48 percent who said they believe China intentionally released the virus as an attack on the United States.

A cover-up of lab-leak evidence

Erdman testified that intelligence community leaders and senior analysts consistently minimized the possibility that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory accident rather than natural animal-to-human transmission. The result was a cover-up that wasted government resources and deprived policymakers of accurate information during a global crisis.

He argued that public health policy would have looked radically different if Americans had been told from the beginning that a Chinese lab was likely responsible for the virus used to justify emergency-use authorization for the experimental mRNA shots.

Fauci’s role

According to Erdman, Fauci’s influence over the COVID origins analysis was deliberate and far-reaching. He testified that Fauci used his position to steer the intelligence community toward a carefully curated circle of scientists and public health officials — many of whom had worked within his professional network for more than two decades — instead of seeking input from a broader and more independent range of experts.

Several of those scientists, Erdman said, were authors of “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2.” Many also served on the Biological Sciences Experts Group, an ODNI advisory panel whose members received substantial funding from NIAID and other federal agencies — funding Erdman said created glaring conflicts of interest that were never disclosed or monitored.

Erdman testified that these same scientists had advised the intelligence community on biodefense matters since 2006 while simultaneously conducting government-funded research, collaborating with Chinese scientists on coronavirus studies, and holding positions within the National Academy of Sciences. Yet, he said, no oversight body existed to track how those overlapping roles may have influenced the advice they provided.

He added that some of those same scientists also helped Fauci rewrite the definition of gain-of-function research in 2015, allowing them to circumvent a federal ban on funding dangerous pathogen experiments.

Others, he said, helped Fauci plan Event 201, an 2019 exercise that almost exactly simulated the COVID-19 pandemic months before it happened.

The scientists handpicked by Fauci all told the CIA that the virus had been released zoonotically.

CIA targeted analysts for lab-leak conclusion

Following an internal CIA review of COVID origins in 2023, a group of analysts concluded that a lab leak was the most likely explanation for the pandemic. Erdman said those analysts filed formal objections through every administrative channel available after their supervisors allegedly rewrote the final assessment overnight — changing it from a clear lab-leak conclusion into a vague, noncommittal finding that avoided assigning responsibility to any origin theory.

The analysts who refused to go along with the revised assessment were retaliated against, Erdman testified.

He also addressed a separate allegation that had circulated publicly — that the analysts were bribed to change their conclusions — and said that claim was false.

CIA surveilled its own investigators

Erdman further testified that while his team was conducting the ODNI investigation — work authorized by the president and carried out under the authority of DNI Tulsi Gabbard — the CIA illegally monitored investigators’ phones and computers and tracked their communications with whistleblowers.

He said the CIA also fired a contractor assisting the investigation just one day after that contractor met with his team.

When the investigation ended, Erdman said, the CIA reclaimed 40 boxes of JFK assassination and MK Ultra files that Gabbard had been preparing to declassify.

What Erdman is calling for

Erdman urged Congress to enforce an executive order on biological research safety and launch a sweeping review of government-funded life sciences programs, including restoring the pre-9/11 definition of gain-of-function research.

He also called on lawmakers to use Congress’s budgetary authority to punish agencies that resist oversight and suggested creating a new investigative body modeled after the 1970s Church Committee, which exposed widespread CIA abuses.

In addition, Erdman argued that inspector general offices should be removed from individual agencies and consolidated into an independent intelligence-community-wide body with direct reporting authority to Congress and the Justice Department. As things currently stand, he said, agencies routinely investigate themselves, clear themselves of wrongdoing, and rarely hold anyone accountable even when misconduct is uncovered.