RAND PAUL TO SAMANTHA POWERS: Why was the public never made aware that they were trying to do dangerous research to create a virus very similar to what COVID-19 became after 15 agencies showed up for a briefing and no one exposed this to the public and we only hear about it by a whistleblower?

Well done @RandPaul!

USAID Predict did in fact fund gain of function work at EcoHealth Alliance. Some of the funding and work was passed on to Dr. Ralph Baric and the Wuhan Institute of Virology. https://t.co/re6EmdAc6s

— Andrew G. Huff, PhD, MS 🇺🇸 (@AGHuff) April 10, 2024

USAID Predict.  

Defuse Project. 

Dr. Paul sends letters to 15 Federal Agencies after discovering their knowledge of the risky Defuse Project. 

RAND, 00:00.  Miss Powers, on April 26th, 2023, you testified before this committee that USAID did not fund Gain of Function research. I'd like to give you a chance to correct the record.  Is it still your position that USAID did not fund Gain of Function research?

POWERS, 00:20. We have no evidence that USAID has funded data function research and we certainly haven't authorized gain of function research.

RAND, 00:28. Well I'll help you behind me we will list a paper from 20 2015 this is a paper produced by the Wuhan Institute of Virology and also by Dr. Barric from UNC in this paper, if you'll see the funding aspect highlighted, it says USAID APT Predict by funding from Equal Health Alliance.  So this paper was one where they took a virus, SARS virus, the backbone of the SARS virus, and then took an S protein from an unknown virus they found in the wild and put them together.  Are you aware that these experiments and study were supported by USAID Predict and grant through EcoHealth Alliance?

POWERS, 01:09. As I said USAID has not authorized gain of function research this is the first time seeing this will have to look into it 

RAND, 01:16.  Well, this has been around since 2015.  We've been over numerous times.  It's been in the public record.  We have repeatedly said that, yes, the USAID did fund Gain of Function research.  Here's the evidence.  But here are some comments from different people about this study, because some will try to argue that this is still not Gain a Function.  Simon Wayne Hobson, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, he points out that 

the researchers have created with this research funded by USAID a novel virus that grows remarkably well in human cells.  If the virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory.

Richard Ebright from Rutgers says 

the only impact of this work is the creation in the lab of a new non-natural risk to humanity.

So is your position that this study was not Gain of Function or that you didn't fund it?  Which is your position?

POWERS, 02:12. We have had an awful lot of back and forth, we've provided thousands of pages of documents.  On this article . . . I can't . . . it looks like it's from 2015, so we will have to look into these specific claims, but again to put on the record USAID has not and will not authorize Gain of Function.

RAND, 02:34. I know that's your position but the record will show that you did.  And this is before your time I don't know why we can't just admit it it did happen and the reason that this is important is that many people want to collect all these viruses from around the world they don't want to just collect the viruses to sort of have them and have a library of viruses.  They take the virus and then they take an S protein from another virus and create a virus that doesn't exist in nature that often has ramifications that can be quite different or quite serious I will give you the words of the authors of this paper on the basis of these findings scientific review panels may deem similar studies building chimeric viruses based on circulating strains too risky to pursue so this was funded by usaid it was funded through the predict program there's no question of that and even the authors admit that it was gain of function so we have to get Beyond sort of quibbling over whether it was because we have to make sure that in the future we are not doing this and that we don't fund this going forward now the predict program was going to be surpassed by another program going after viruses and that has been suspended and that's all good but we have to admit the past and be truthful about the past in order to go forward because millions of people died from Covid-19.  The FBI has concluded that it came from a lab in Wuhan.  The Department of Energy has concluded that.  Even the CIA initially their scientific board voted 6 to 1 until they were overturned by higher-ups at the CIA to say otherwise. They voted to say that this thing came from the lab as well.  It only comes from the lab if we are in favor of creating these things.  We can't control everything China does, but we certainly shouldn't be funding it.  So we have to be honest that this was funded.  Now there was a warning sign to us that this was going on.  There was something called the DEFUSE Project in 2018 that was presented to DARPA once again by Baric and Dr. Shi Zhengli in Wuhan.  The DEFUSE Project was to create a Coronavirus with a furin cleavage site which doesn't exist in nature but is incredibly more infectious in humans.  There was a briefing to 15 agencies.  One of the agencies was USAID.  There is a briefing about this DEFUSE Project but nobody from USAID, nobody from all 15 agencies ever told anyone about this project.  It was hidden for years and years, and only revealed by a brave lieutenant colonel Marine, Andrew Basiago, working at DARPA who exposed this when everybody else had hidden this.  And so my question is was USAID in this briefing about a research project that had incredible danger to our country and finally was funded?  Will you provide the names of the people from USAID in this meeting who can be interviewed, so we can find out why didn't they tell anyone, or did they tell anyone, their superiors, and nobody or did people ignore them?  Why was the public never made aware that they were trying to do dangerous research to create a virus very similar to what COVID-19 became after 15 agencies showed up for a briefing and no one exposed this to the public and we only hear about it by a whistleblower?  Will you provide us the name of the person through USAID who attended this briefing in 2018, and let us interview them to find out what happened?  Why was this never revealed to the public?

POWERS, 05:44 So I think within the 10,000 pages of documents that you have from USAID or whatever documents we have on this DARPA proposers meeting I received a letter we received the letter from your staff yesterday we certainly looked at the requests but to give a little context US government agencies often on good days show up for one another go to each other's meetings this is not something US AIDever considered funding or was ever engaged on in some substantive way.

RAND, 06:19. The point is that after hearing that somebody wanted to put a furin cleavage site in the virus, alarm bells go off, and then when you see the virus in 2020 and you say "O, my goodness!  They did what they were asking," someone should have said, "Wow, I was in that hearing and I didn't think anything of it at the time.  But now I am like, you know, maybe I should tell somebody.  Maybe I should call up the president.  Maybe I should call up Anthony Fauci.  Maybe somebody should be informed that we learned about this, and I didn't think anything of it at the time.  You're right, it could have been inconsequential in 2018, but in 2020 it becomes profoundly important.  Why didn't anybody from government come forward and warn us that this could be a virus not from nature, which is not very infectious usually, it was incredibly infectious because it had been pre-adapted in a lab for human transmission.

POWERS, 07:00. Look I just want to come back to your earlier point all of this ended at USAID in 2020.  It is before my time.  We don't feel defensive about these engagements.  We've appreciated . . . 

RAND, 07:15. All that we are asking for is that we'd like to interview the person who was at that meeting

POWERS, 07:17  I understand.  We will look at that request.  But what I just want to make clear is that in a collaborative spirit, we also understand the stakes, the human stakes, of history, of recent history, and the risks you have raised flags in a manner that has required us to dig in in important ways on top of what we have been doing previously.  And so we will continue the back and forth with you and your office, and certainly don't ever want to be in a position to do anything ourselves using taxpayer resources to create risks.

RAND, 07:55. Thank you, and I do appreciate the cooperation that your agency has given us.