The NIH Continues to Illegally Withhold and Redact COVID-19 Origins Information – Opinion

The Intercept reported on Sunday that nearly 300 pages from documents the organization requested regarding COVID-19 were removed in its entirety.  Although I’ve not been directly in touch with The Intercept journalists regarding the origins of COVID-19, I’ve been monitoring their attempts to find the necessary information in order to verify reporting that RedState has already done.

An Intercept Report:

“With the global death toll from Covid-19 approaching 6 million, the need to understand the origins of the pandemic is both pressing and grave. The National Institutes of Health keeps a number of critical documents, which could help answer this question. This week, in response to ongoing litigation over public records related to coronavirus research funded by the federal agency, the NIH sent The Intercept 292 fully redacted pages rather than substantive material that could help us understand how the virus first came to infect humans.”

Without a comprehensive investigation of the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s research, it is unlikely that the NIH, NIAID or any other government entity would be able to explain the source of COVID-19.  Dr. Anthony Fauci had previously claimed that the NIH funded Gain-of-Function research at Wuhan Insitute of Virology. These claims were later proven to be untrue. EcoHealth Alliance, a non-profit intermediary was funding the work.  Fauci’s testimonies were not in accordance with what was recorded. The NIH sent EcoHealth Alliance a report, which stated that the new virus created by the research had been more powerful than the other viral lines of the chimeric and genetic hybrid viruses.

Yet, despite this information showing that Fauci has intentionally lied to Congress, a crime which has earned other former Trump officials arrest warrants, Fauci, the NIH, and the NIAID continue to stonewall journalists’ efforts to secure information confirming that the NIH was indeed funding banned research at the Wuhan lab.  The issue is further complicated by the fact that Chinese officials outright prohibited any attempt to investigate Wuhan’s lab in a COVID origins inquiry, threatening nuclear military action.

The question that should be asked is “What are the requirements for 292 pages?” When our government limits what it can or cannot redact when releasing government information?  The 292 pages of redacted information do not contain any personal data, trade secrets, sensitive security information or informant names. Likely not, in fact, short of those reasons, as determined by US courts, the government cannot redact the information, even when it may be less-than-complimentary of their dealings.  RedState filed at most two FOIA request from the NIH between June 3rd 2021 and now, but neither have been processed nor returned.  This, of course, was after the unilateral determination made by the NIH which stated that I was not a journalist and that the reporting done at RedState doesn’t amount to real journalism.

Freedom of Information Act was created to ensure that the government does not have access to secrets of any kind. To be eligible for privilege of redaction by the NIH, they must prove that release would reveal one of four accepted court excuses.  It is understandable that the NIH might have wanted to restrict redaction. SomeInformation that required redaction included personal phone numbers, email addresses, and research participants. The fact that 292 pages were redacted by the NIH, demonstrating a clear intent to cover up the truth, is a sign of a deliberate effort to hide the information.

The NIH doesn’t care about determining what caused the COVID-19 epidemic. They are more interested in telling the truth regarding the risk associated with conducting gain of function research at a Chinese Military Lab.  The NIH is actively involved in the cover-up.  Their original goal, which is to find pandemic causing SARS Bat Coronaviruses, is lost. They have no interest in finding the virus’ origin.  Compounded with Fauci’s lies, is there another plausible explanation other than a cover-up?  Why lie, why redact, why stonewall, if the goal was not covering up the NIH’s role in the funding of the research that created the SARS-CoV-2 virus?  We should not ignore the motives for lying and covering up.  Do you think our government should be complicit with the death of six millions people? Would the information to prove it and all the other relevant facts that support them not be available for the entire world?

We can only assume that, if there is no aggressive legal action against the government, they will cover it up.