DARPA Project DEFUSE. Defusing the Threat of Bat Borne Corona Viruses. Declassified. Special Case Corona Virus 2023-01-12.

INTER-ORGANIZATION MEMO DISCUSSING HAZARD OF GAIN OF FUNCTION AND LACK OF CERTAINTY OF VACCINE EFFICACY NOTE: THE LEAD AGENCY IN THE WUHAN-USA-DOD-UNIVERSITY PROGRAM IS ECOHEALTH ALLIANCE

A PRE-EMPT BACKGROUND

PAGES CONCERNING PUBLIC ISSUES

ORGANIZATIONS PARTICIPATING IN THE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM

PROGRAM REJECTION MEMO

WHAT FAUCI KNEW AND WHAT FAUCI SAID AND WHAT FAUCI DID Miss a day, miss a lot. Subscribe to The Defender's Top News of the Day. It's free. Editor’s note: House Republicans on Monday commissioned a special investigative panel focused on the coronavirus pandemic during which they hope to press scientists and federal officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, about the origin of the public health crisis and the government’s response to it. The following is a paraphrase of the opening round — the warning shot — by U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) Tuesday in which he used his time to outline seven facts that Dr. Anthony Fauci knew, and, more importantly, what Fauci did, and did not do, when he was made aware of these facts. This does not bode well for Fauci and those involved in the cover-up. Fauci understood that American tax dollars went to EcoHealth Alliance and that money was then funneled to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) lab in China. Fauci knew EcoHealth Alliance was given an exemption from the pause on gain-of-function research. Fauci knew that the security standards at the WIV lab in China were deficient. Fauci knew that EcoHealth Alliance was not in compliance with its grant reporting requirements and wasn’t adhering to the contract. Fauci knew that gain-of-function research was in fact being conducted in the WIV lab in China. Fauci knew that the standard P3CO interagency review process wasn’t followed in approving the grant to EcoHealth Alliance. Fauci knew that the virus likely came from the lab where U.S. taxpayer dollars were sent … the very city where that lab is at, a deadly virus breaks out that would ultimately kill six million people around the world. BUY NOW: Ed Dowd’s Must-Read Book — “Cause Unknown” Importantly, what did Fauci do when he had this information? On Feb. 1, 2020, what did Fauci do with this information? Did he tell the president of the U.S., commander in chief, and say hey we’ve got a deadly virus that’s broken out in China in Wuhan where we’ve been sending American tax dollars to a lab that’s not up to code that’s doing gain-of-function? Did he tell the chief of staff? Did he tell his boss, former Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar? Did he tell Dr. Robert Redfield? Dr. Deborah Birx? Dr. Brett Giroir? No, he organized a conference call Feb. 1, 2020, at 2 p.m., with him, Francis Collins and 11 virologists from around the world to who he had been handing out American tax dollars for years and years and years … Before that call, virologists including Kristian Andersen said things like “virus looks engineered, virus not consistent with evolutionary theory.” On the day of the call, Andersen said, “I don’t know how this gets done in nature but it would be easy to do in a lab.” On this conference call, they get their story straight and three days later the very people who said this thing came from a lab change their tune and say that anyone who thinks that is crazy … In an email from EcoHealth Alliance, Fauci received gratitude: “This is terrific, we are happy to hear that our gain-of-function research funding pause has been lifted” … Over the last several years, Fauci told us: it wasn’t our tax dollars. it wasn’t gain-of-function. it wasn’t a lab leak. the vaccinated can’t get COVID-19. the vaccinated can’t transmit the virus. there is no such thing as natural immunity when it came to this virus. We can’t trust some of the folks who were supposed to give us accurate information because they didn’t … they knew from the start. If you’ve got a government not giving it to you straight, that’s something that you have to make sure we understand so it doesn’t happen again. Not only we don’t want a terrible virus to happen again, we don’t want the government misleading us about a virus that could happen. Starting next month we’ll look into it. We’ll make sure the country gets the facts like they should have had on Feb. 1, three years ago. DEVELOPMENTS JAN 2023

Rejection Letter - Findings p. 1/2 REJECTION OF DEFUSE PROJECT PROPOSAL Proposal Title: DEFUSE - Defusing the Threat of Bat-borne Coronaviruses (2018) Proposal Identifier: HR001118S0017-PREEMPT-FP-019 Amounts Requested by EcoHealth Alliance: Phase I $8,411,546 Phase II $5,797,699 Total: $14,209,245 RESULT The DEFUSE proposed project by EHA was rejected by DARPA, although “if funding became available”, certain components of particular interest could have gone ahead, subject to a clear contractual Dual Use Research of Concern (DURC) risk mitigation plan that ‘includes a responsible communications plan’. REASONS FOR REJECTION The Biological Technologies Office of DARPA reviewed the EcoHealth Alliance DEFUSE proposal and the Evaluation Reports and decided it was “selectable”. In doing so, two out of three reviewers considered the aim of preempting “zoonotic spillover through reduction of viral shedding in the bat caves” as of interest to DARPA. These reviewers assessed the EHA and Collaborators team and concluded that: - They have plenty of prior experience. - They have access to Yunnan caves where bats are infected with SARSr viruses. - They have carried out past surveillance work - They have developed geo-based risk maps of zoonotic hotspots - Their proposed experimental work is logical and can validate molecular and evolutionary models. - Their proposed preemption approaches can rapidly be validated using bat and "batenized" mouse models. However, the Biological Technologies Office did not recommend it be funded at that time because significant weaknesses were identified: Rejection Letter - Findings p. 2/2 1. The proposal is considered to potentially involve GoF/DURC research because they propose to synthesize spike glycoproteins which bind to human cell receptors and insert them into SARSr-CoV backbones to assess whether they can cause SARS-like disease. 2. However the proposal does not mention or assess potential risks of Gain of Function (GoF) research. 3. Nor does the proposal mention or assess Dual Use Research of Concern (DURC) issues, and thus fails to present a DURC risk mitigation plan. 4. The proposal hardly addresses or discusses ethical, legal, and social issues (ELSI). 5. The proposal fails to discuss problems with the proposed vaccine delivery systems caused by the known issues of variability in vaccine dosage. 6. The proposal did not provide sufficient information about how EHA would use any data obtained and how they would model development or perform any necessary statistical analysis. 7. The proposal did not explain clearly how EHA will take advantage of their previous work, nor how that previous work could be extended. 8. The proposal failed to clearly assess how it would deploy and validate the “TA2 preemption methods” in the wild. This refers to carrying out experiments with effective immune boosting molecules and delivery techniques via FEA aerosolization mechanism at one test and. two control bat cave sites in Yunnan, China (PARC, EHA, WIV). 9. The proposal does not address concerns about these vaccines not being able to protect against the wide variety of coronaviruses in bat caves which are constantly evolving, due to insufficient epitope coverage. --- DRASTIC independently assesses that the tone of the proposal (see for instance the ‘our cave complex’) and the deep suggested involvement of some of the WIV parties (Shi Zheng Li employed half-time for 3 years - paid via the grant - and invited to DARPA headquarters at Arlington), may not have helped either - especially in the absence of any DURC risk mitigation program. It is clear that the proposed DEFUSE project led by Peter Daszak could have put local communities at risk by failing to consider the following issues: - Gain of Function - Dual Use Research of Concern - Vaccine epitope coverage - Regulatory requirements - ELSI (ethical, legal, and social issues) - Data Usage

Dr Charles M Lieber Oversaw the Construction of the Wuhan Lvl IV LAb