According to whistleblower documents exclusively obtained by The NY Post, federal grant records that outlined a “blueprint” for engineering the virus behind COVID-19 might have been improperly classified by the Defense Department, potentially undermining the accuracy of US intelligence agencies’ investigation into the pandemic’s origins.

Marine Corps Lt. Col. Joseph Murphy, who now leads the Warfighting Lab at Quantico, Virginia, discovered in July 2021 that an unclassified grant proposal, known as Project DEFUSE, had been uploaded to a classified network and alerted his superiors about the oversight.

Despite scientists later referring to the DEFUSE proposal as “smoking gun” proof that COVID-19 was artificially created in a Chinese laboratory, it was omitted from the final report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) on the virus’s origins in August 2021, even though the document was not classified.

Murphy could not determine why the proposal had been misclassified, nor was it included in the ODNI report, even though it had been provided to the Intelligence Community (IC) by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), where Murphy was stationed at the time.

In a letter on Thursday to Intelligence Community Inspector General Thomas Monheim, Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) disclosed the whistleblower’s findings, calling for an investigation into whether “the DEFUSE records were impeded, misdirected or if the significance of the proposal was downplayed by advisors or staff.”

“The ODNI assessment remains flawed,” Marshall stated, referencing both the DEFUSE documents and previous claims that “conflicted individuals may have censored the laboratory-origin related intelligence.”

“If true, this signals an alarming breach of integrity in the investigative process,” he said. “Today I write with urgency to request that your office investigate the federal government’s COVID-19 origin analytical process and results.”

On May 26, 2021, President Biden instructed ODNI to conduct a 90-day investigation into whether the COVID-19 outbreak, which claimed over 1.2 million American lives, was caused by a lab accident or occurred naturally from animal-to-human transmission.

The investigation concluded with the US Intelligence Community issuing a “divided” opinion on the origins of COVID, determining that both a lab leak and natural transmission were equally plausible, with only the FBI and the Energy Department identifying a lab leak as the more probable source.

However, the DEFUSE documents outlined plans to create a coronavirus that would bear identical traits to SARS-CoV-2.

In May 2018, the Manhattan-based nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance submitted this proposal to DARPA, but it ultimately was not funded.

EcoHealth was later prohibited from receiving federal grants after it “likely violated protocols of the NIH regarding biosafety” and did not submit reviews of its work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), now infamous and blacklisted.

The COVID-19 pandemic began in the same Chinese city, over 800 miles away from any bats capable of transmitting SARS-CoV-2 to humans. The lab was well-known for its bat coronavirus research and had conducted gain-of-function experiments on them from 2014 to 2021, with US taxpayer support.

The grant proposal, titled “Defusing the Threat of Bat-borne Coronaviruses,” involved Dr. Ralph Baric from the University of North Carolina and Dr. Shi Zhengli from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, known as the “bat lady” for her expertise in this area.

They intended to carry out high-risk gain-of-function experiments—which was one of the reasons DARPA denied funding—to make bat coronaviruses more infectious at the Wuhan lab.

Marshall’s letter also highlighted that Baric might have been among the private scientists consulted by ODNI during their probe, an apparent conflict of interest given his prior role on the Intelligence Community agency’s Biological Sciences Experts Group.

The Kansas senator stated that “Undisclosed conflicts of interest may have included professional reliance on federal grants, a bias towards risky pathogen research projects, or collaborative relationships with the WIV.”

Despite EcoHealth’s suspension, gain-of-function research continued via $1.4 million in grants and subgrants from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

EcoHealth has consistently denied funding this research, contradicting NIH Principal Deputy Director Dr. Lawrence Tabak’s sworn testimony. A representative previously stated to The Post that its activities hadn’t “violated any terms of NIH’s grant” and that “oversight of experiments adhered to NIH grant award conditions.”

These grants sanctioned “genetic experiments to combine naturally occurring bat coronaviruses with SARS and MERS viruses, resulting in hybridized (also known as chimeric) coronavirus strains” from 2014 to 2019, as per a June 2023 report by the Government Accountability Office.

During an October biosecurity panel at the University of North Carolina, former CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield indicated that unfunded projects could still be pursued under alternative grants.

Additional drafts and notes of DEFUSE obtained by US Right to Know reveal that EcoHealth President Dr. Peter Daszak intended to “downplay” Wuhan lab involvement in the proposal submitted to DARPA.

Redfield, alongside other former intelligence and public health figures — including newly appointed CIA Director John Ratcliffe — holds the belief that a lab leak is the most likely cause of the COVID-19 outbreak.

In September 2021, The Intercept first reported on the DARPA grant proposal, which described the “exact feature” of a furin cleavage site later observed in the virus.

The whistleblower documents indicate that the proposal was improperly uploaded to a classified network without the necessary markings, which goes against federal policy.

“The storage, handling, and marking of the documents in question is consistent with DARPA and DoD policies and procedures concurrent with the origination of the files,” as stated in a controlled unclassified information report by the Department of Defense’s Office of Inspector General.

Murphy’s disclosures “do NOT support the allegation of concealment/cover-up or withholding information from interagency partners with a legitimate need to know,” according to the report.

Daszak and Fauci have repeatedly dismissed claims that COVID-19 resulted from a lab mishap or gain-of-function experiments at the WIV, with Fauci in particular branding lab-leak advocates as “conspiracy theorists.”

Marshall countered in his letter: “No SARS2 genomic or serological evidence was found in the over 80,000 domestic and wild animal samples tested in China.”

He also cited a CDC workshop held in China in May 2019, which concluded that zoonotic spread was highly improbable, stating: “Of the 30 most dangerous zoonotic pathogens poised for outbreak in China, coronavirus only ranked as number 21.”

In 2018, an EcoHealth-WIV study found “that Wuhan inhabitants had very low risk of exposure to bat coronavirus infections,” using 240 Wuhan residents as a control group benchmark for their studies, Marshall added.

Marshall urged Monheim to determine if “an integrity breach occurred during the federal probe and that the ODNI assessments may have errors, omissions or manipulated intelligence.”

“The OIG investigation can uncover any deliberate actions which may rise to the level of misconduct, false statements, obstruction of federal proceedings, conspiracy, conflicts of interest, or infractions of administrative or civil laws,” he concluded.

On Thursday, Rutgers University molecular biologist Dr. Richard Ebright told The Post that an inspector general’s investigation into the situation would be “a first step” toward establishing accountability for COVID’s origins.

“I agree with Senator Marshall that DoD and IC officials likely engaged in ‘deliberate actions which may rise to the level of misconduct, false statements, obstruction of federal proceedings, conspiracy, conflicts of interest, or infractions of administrative or civil laws’ and that a DoD OIG investigation is needed, as a first step, to expose and ensure accountability for such actions,” Ebright stated.

{Matzav.com}