FOIA Docs: Bio Researchers Lied to Pentagon in Scheme to Direct Money to Wuhan Lab

A 2018 research proposal called DEFUSE called for synthesizing
spike proteins with furin cleavage sites — the same feature that
supercharged SARS-CoV-2 into the most infectious pandemic
pathogen in a century. (Photo credit: Unsplash)

A new report chronicles a scheme by U.S. bio-researchers to mislead the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) office in a 2018 grant proposal, Project DEFUSE, to direct American monies to a secret Chinese lab conducting unsafe coronavirus research in Wuhan.

The report which is being blacked-out by American corporate media, is authored by Emily Kopp, a reporter at U.S. Right to Know.

Ms. Kopp analyzed documents obtained by U.S. Right to Know, via a Freedom of Information Act request to the U.S. Geological Survey. Read all of the documents here.

Writes Kopp:

American researchers concealed their intention to conduct high-risk coronavirus research in Wuhan under lax safety standards from the Pentagon the year before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to documents obtained by U.S. Right to Know. 

A 2018 grant proposal called Project DEFUSE, coauthored by the Wuhan Institute of Virology and American scientists, has stoked concern that the pandemic resulted from a lab accident. 

It proposed engineering high-risk coronaviruses of the same species as SARS and SARS-CoV-2. Most worrying to some scientists: The proposal involved synthesizing spike proteins with furin cleavage sites — the same feature that supercharged SARS-CoV-2 into the most infectious pandemic pathogen in a century. Indeed, some scientists have likened DEFUSE to a blueprint for generating SARS-CoV-2 in the lab.

The report can be read as politically shielding the Pentagon from much blame in supporting bio-research gone bad, as DARPA turned down the 2018 grant proposal, Project DEFUSE; and the two American bio researchers appear to conspire to mislead DARPA, the documents show.

EcoHealth Alliance currently is receiving $25 million in Department of Defense grants and contracts, despite having conspired to defraud the Department of Defense and likely having caused a pandemic that killed 20 million and cost $25 trillion.pic.twitter.com/IcFctdd3ZG

— Richard H. Ebright (@R_H_Ebright) December 19, 2023

BioSafety Group Launches Search Engine on COVID-19 Origins FOIA Documents

OriginSearch.io is an open-search engine on FOIA-ed
collection of documents relevant to investigating origins of
COVID-19, notes the search engine webpage.

The BioSafety Now research group has launched a search engine that uses keywords to comb through some 75,000 pages of often censored documents the U.S. government has allowed the public to view after FOIA requests.

OriginSearch.io is a "simple (open-search) search engine on the collection of documents relevant to investigating the origin of COVID-19," notes the search engine webpage.

Many of these heretofore government-held documents were obtained through FOIA requests filed by organizations such as USRTK (U.S. Right to Know), The Intercept, and White Coat Waste Project.

The Biden administration has consistently worked to keep COVID-19 origins information secret, and government-funded researchers have systemically mislead the public on COVID 19 origins questions.

This secrecy commitment comes over public-interest groups' and Republican Party objections, as the administration censored and banned Covid 19 information the government and its political allies falsely branded as misinformation, disinformation and malinformation.

NEW RESOURCE - https://t.co/McDASz6rCS, a search engine on documents relevant to the origin of COVID-19.

Search for an exact word or phrase in >75,000 pages of documents obtained through FOIA by @USRightToKnow, @theintercept, @WhiteCoatWaste, and othershttps://t.co/bmCMLJPwdV

— Biosafety Now! (@BiosafetyNow) September 22, 2023

Feds Regularly Monitored Black Lives Matter Since Ferguson

"The Department of Homeland Security has been monitoring the Black Lives Matter movement since anti-police protests erupted in Ferguson, Missouri last summer, according to hundreds of documents obtained by The Intercept through a Freedom of Information Act request."

George Joseph at The Intercept has the story.

Open Our Government

Our government wants to know a lot about us, but almost nothing about them. It should be the other way around.

OpenTheGovernment.org concludes:

The current administration has exercised an unprecedented level not only of restriction of access to information about federal government's policies and decisions, but also of suppression of discussion of those policies, their underpinnings, and their implications. It has also increasingly refused to be held accountable to the public through the oversight responsibilities of Congress. These practices inhibit democracy and our representative government; neither the public nor Congress can make informed decisions in these circumstances. Our open society is undermined and made insecure.

And Ruth Rosen reports on The Secret White House. This regime does not see itself as accountable to the public, and deserves to be treated as such. Face it, we live in a society high-jacked by an authoritarian bunch of repulsive renegades, at least if one believes in a Jeffersonian conception of government.
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NYT: White House Shell Game

So total is the White House's contempt of any oversight by Congress or the American public, that it does not even attempt to lie well as it evades request after request for information about how the people's government is functioning.

August 24, 2007
Editorial
White House Shell Game

The Bush administration’s obsession with secrecy took another absurd turn this week. The administration is claiming that the White House Office of Administration is not covered by the Freedom of Information Act, even though there are some compelling reasons to think it is. Like the fact that the office has its own FOIA officer. And it responded to 65 FOIA requests last year. And the White House’s own Web site, as of yesterday, insisted the office is covered by FOIA.

The administration’s logic-free claim about the Office of Administration follows fast on the heels of Vice President Dick Cheney’s laughable claim that he was immune to an open-government law because his office supposedly was not an executive agency.

The fight over the Office of Administration’s status is part of a larger battle over access to an estimated five million e-mail messages that have mysteriously disappeared from White House computers. The missing messages are important evidence in the scandal over the firing of nine United States attorneys, apparently because they refused to use their positions to help Republicans win elections. The Office of Administration seems to know a lot about when and how those messages disappeared, but it does not want to tell the public.

What exactly does the administration want to hide? It is certainly acting as if the e-mail messages would confirm suspicions that the White House coordinated the prosecutors’ firings and that it may have broken laws. It is hard to believe the administration’s constant refrain that there is nothing to the prosecutor scandal when it is working so hard to avoid letting the facts about it get out.

The administration’s refusal to comply with open-government laws is ultimately more important than any single scandal. The Freedom of Information Act and other right-to-know laws were passed because government transparency is vital to a democracy. The American people cannot monitor their elected officials, and ensure that they act in the public interest, if government is allowed to operate under a veil of secrecy.
Fortunately, the White House does not have the final say on the Office of Administration. It made its absurd arguments to a federal judge who can restore some logic to the situation by ruling that the Freedom of Information Act applies, and the data must be turned over.
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