COVID-19 Whistleblower Hearing

Senator Rand Paul (13:22):

The COVID- 19 pandemic was one of the most consequential events of our lifetime and to this day the American people have never received a full accounting of where it came from, what our government knew, and why they had to fight their own government to find out. Today, the committee will hear from an intelligence community whistleblower about these questions. The witness will testify that the CIA scientific analyst repeatedly concluded that a laboratory leak was the most likely origin of COVID-19 and that those conclusions were buried, softened, or withheld from Congress while the public was told to trust a different story. For years, Americans were told to trust the experts, trust the agencies, trust the intelligence community, and trust the officials who assured us that they were following the science. But the evidence before the committee tells a very different story.

(14:15)
Today, we will expose a system in which a small circle of officials, scientists, grantees, and intelligence advisors move from agencies to agency, meeting to meeting, briefing to briefing, reviewing one another's work and shaping one another's conclusions and presenting those conclusions to Congress and the public as if they were independent conclusions. Only it was not independent, it was a circle. One part of that circle is a body most Americans have never heard of. The Biological Sciences Expert Group known as BSEG or the B Group. BSEG operates under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Its stated purpose is to give the intelligence community access to outside scientific experts on biological threats. Sounds reasonable, but not if those experts are not independent.

(15:09)
For example, Dr. Ralph Baric collaborated with Dr. Zhengli Shi in Wuhan to create gain of function coronaviruses. But Dr. Baric was also part of BSEG and an active consultant to intelligence agencies on the origins of COVID-19 pandemic. Likewise, Peter Daszak received hundreds of millions of dollars from the U.S. government and worked with Dr. Shi also on these gain of function experiments. Daszak was even sent to China with the WHO to investigate the origins of COVID. So the very scientists that were commissioned to investigate COVID were in some cases the very scientists who were complicit in the origins of the gain of function experiments that may well have created COVID. In essence, the intelligence community pays researchers to review work and write papers.

(16:03)
NIH funds their grants, the CIA then consults them and gives them access to classified information. The National Academies publish their work. Policymakers then cite the result as a consensus, but it's a circle. At the center of the government side of this circle was Dr. Anthony Fauci. For years, Dr. Fauci was not merely a public health official speaking from the NIH. He had a longstanding relationship with the national security and intelligence apparatus on biological threats, dangerous pathogens, classified life sciences researches, pandemic preparedness and COVID origins. Again and again, documents show him being brought into national security discussions far beyond ordinary public health messaging. During COVID, intelligence officials arranged for Dr. Fauci to review highly classified intelligence assessments that could not even be sent outside the White House complex. But how can Anthony Fauci objectively comment on a discussion of COVID origins when he approved the very funding that may have caused the pandemic virus?

(17:11)
From the outset of the pandemic, Dr. Fauci shaped the conclusions. Dozens of times, he referred to the idea that the pandemic originating in the lab was a conspiracy, that it was a conspiracy theory. Dr. Fauci convened the now infamous February 1st, 2020 call. Some scientists on that call privately raised serious concerns about a laboratory origin. Yet ironically, those same scientists later co-authored the proximal origin paper, which publicly dismissed the lab leak hypothesis. One author received a $9 million grant from Dr. Fauci's own agency after he changed his opinion from lab leak on the private phone call to natural origin in public. At the same time, Dr. Fauci coordinated with the National Academies on coronavirus origins and public facing messaging. These were not independent experts reaching a consensus, they were part of the same machine designed to reach the same conclusion.

(18:16)
The question is not whether the government may consult experts. The question is whether those experts were independent, whether conflicts were disclosed, whether dissenting views were preserved, whether the lab leak possibility was fairly evaluated and whether Congress and the American people received the truth or a curated result. When Congress asked these questions, government officials lied to our face. They classified the documents. They suppressed the information. They changed the definitions. They invoked sources and methods. They told Congress only what they wanted Congress to know. In 2023, John Ratcliffe, the former director of national intelligence, testified before Congress with a stark warning. He said a lab leak was the only explanation credibly supported by intelligence, science and common sense.

(19:09)
He warned that partisan politics and analyst disagreement with Trump administration policy, Trump derangement syndrome had created illegitimate roadblocks to the truth. I agree. He said that COVID-19 Origin Act, which Congress passed unanimously, should finally make intelligence on COVID's origins public. I couldn't agree more. Despite a unanimously passed law though requiring the declassification of all information related to COVID origins, the deep states still resist this congressional mandate. Our witness today will explain what happened inside the CIA. According to his testimony, CIA scientific analysts concluded multiple times between 2021 and 2023 that a lab leak was the most likely origin of COVID-19. Yet those conclusions never shaped the official narrative, never made the intelligence report. Congress was never told. It was not until after the 2024 election that the outgoing Biden administration directed the CIA to issue an assessment, not because of new intelligence, but so officials could walk out of the door claiming there was nothing left to find.

(20:24)
That is not analysis. That is a cleanup operation. This hearing is about more than one witness, one assessment or one agency. It's about a federal apparatus that told the American people to trust the science while hiding the machinery that shaped the science. It's about an intelligence community that relied on outside experts whose conflicts were never disclosed. It's about public health officials with access to intelligence that Congress has struggled to obtain. It's about researchers and advisors cycling through grants, contracts, classified briefings, federal service and advisory committees and presenting the results as independent, even though they weren't. The coverup is not just about protecting one research grant. It's about protecting an entire network of labs, grants, intermediaries, and bureaucratic architecture quietly engineered to outlast any moratorium, any congressional inquiry and any election. After millions died, children lost years of learning, small businesses were destroyed, civil liberties were restricted and dissenting Americans were censored and smeared.

(21:37)
The government owes its people the evidence. Our witnesses testifying publicly today at great personal risk. He and other brave whistleblowers have come forward because the truth was being buried, because government secrecy cannot become government impunity. I want to acknowledge the Trump administration officials who made good on their commitment to transparency and cooperated with this investigation. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Director of NIH, Jay Bhattacharya, Director of the National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and former Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Nome. They set a standard. I expect the rest of the administration to meet it. We owe the American people a complete record. We owe every family harmed by this pandemic a government that does not hide behind secrecy, conflicts, and curated science when the stakes are life and death in public starting today.

(22:41)
I want to note for the record that Mr. Erdman is appearing today pursuant to a subpoena issued by this committee on May 5th, 2026. This is a public hearing. The witness is a current CIA employee and has previously provided testimony to the committee in a classified setting. If a question calls for classified information or if the witness believes any answer may implicate classified information, the witness should advise the committee before answering and the committee will address the matter through the appropriate procedures. The transcript of the witness' prior classified deposition has not been finalized and has not completed classification review. Members and the witness should not quote from, characterize or seek confirmation of deposition testimony that may contain classified information in this public setting. It is the practice of this committee to swear in the witness. Will you please stand and raise your right hand?

(23:39)
Do you swear that the testimony you will give before this committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help you God? Thank you. You may be seated. James E. Erdman III is a CIA senior operations officer. He's a decorated officer with decades of intelligence and national security experience. Before joining the CIA in 2013, he served with the Second Battalion 75th Ranger Regiment and as a Foreign Services' Officer at the Department of State. He recently completed a joint duty assignment with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence Director Initiatives Group. Mr. Erdman holds a Bachelor of Science in Biology with a minor in chemistry from Western Oregon University and has received the Director of National Intelligence Award and the CIA Intelligence Medal of Merit. Mr. Erdman, you are recognized for your opening statement.

James Erdman III (24:41):

Good morning, Chairman Paul, and other members of the Oversight Committee. Thank you for the complimentary introduction and I appreciate the committee's dedication to transparency and accountability. I am a career CIA operations officer and as you mentioned, I was on joint duty assignment at the Office of Director National Intelligence Directors Initiatives Group or the DIG between March 2025 and April 2026. I was responsible for leading the DIGS investigation into COVID origins, anomalous health incidents, and unidentified anomalous phenomena. I'm here today to discuss the COVID coverup, the national security implications associated with the DIGS investigative findings and CIA refusal to comply with lawful oversight as well as how we remedy these problems.

(25:45)
Intelligence community leaders and senior analysts downplayed the possibility that the COVID pandemic originated as a result of a lab incident. Motives are difficult to define given the scope of the DIGS review. Intentional or not, the IC's actions resulted in a coverup wasted resources and a failure to properly inform policymakers. Public health policy would have been very different had the American public been made aware that a virus from a lab in China was going to serve as the foundation for an emergency use authorization mRNA products being mandated by the former administration. Dr. Fauci's role in the coverup was intentional. Dr. Fauci influenced the analytical process and findings by leveraging his position to ensure the IC consulted with a conflicted list of curated subject matter experts, public health officials, and scientists. This included some of the authors of the paper, The Proximal Origin

James Erdman III (27:00):

... SARS-CoV-2 and other public health experts who have been in his orbit for the last 20 plus years.

(27:08)
Some of the scientists were part of the Biological Sciences Experts Group, or the BSEG, an office of Director National Intelligence Advisory Body whose members often receive considerable funding from NIAID and public health agencies. The BSEG scientists influenced national laboratory WMD research, policy decisions, finished analysis, and other intelligence matters, creating misaligned incentives and conflicts of interest, as well as counterintelligence issues.

(27:50)
Since 2006, the BSEG consulted part-time on biodefense issues for the IC while conducting government-funded research and holding academia positions, as well as maintaining roles in public health institutions and serving as members in the National Academy of Science. They received funding from NIAID and other agencies for vaccine research, USAID's predict project, the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, and even worked with Chinese scientists on coronavirus and other pathogen studies pursuing vaccines. There was no oversight monitoring how this web of relationships influenced research, policy, and public health in any holistic way for over 20 years. In fact, several of the BSEG scientists helped Dr. Fauci rewrite definitions of gain of function in 2015 to lift a funding pause on dangerous research. Still, others participated in planing event 201 in 2019. This was a coronavirus pandemic tabletop exercise curiously similar to the events that played out during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it was attended by Dr. Fauci and individuals with IC ties like former DNI Admiral Haynes.

(29:15)
The CIA and DNI analytic managers responsible for examining the origin of COVID made decisions inconsistent with the conclusions of subject matter experts and analytical tradecraft, consistently favoring the theory of zoonosis or natural origin. Following the CIA's COVID relook that culminated in 2023, the CIA retaliated against analysts supporting the lab leak hypothesis. CIA analysts were not bribed. The analysts that supported the 2023 lab leak conclusion took every administrative measure available to them to address their deep concerns regarding the analytic integrity of their finished intelligence. CIA managers retaliated against them for their refusal to agree with management's middle of the night anonymous rewrite of the analysis, which changed the assessment to a non-call judgment.

(30:28)
Dr. Anthony Fauci's influence over the IC's COVID origin analysis and the witting and unwitting role some BSEG scientists and IC personnel played in the coverup exposed why this issue is of deep concern. Failure to address the United States government's inability to differentiate between public health and biodefense and the oversight resistant ecosystem of life science actors has been fertile ground for increasingly dangerous continental United States gain of function research, as well as similar research conducted in US government-supported labs abroad.

(31:10)
Post-9/11 changes in public health and biodefense roles and responsibilities have blurred the lines between scientists, the military, the intelligence community. It has resulted in a deliberately opaque and excessively redundant biodefense research policy and financial infrastructure seemingly intended to escalate bureaucratic bloat. This is a national security crisis caused by the inability to provide real oversight.

(31:47)
The systematic failures associated with muddled boundaries between biodefense and public health and an overly complex infrastructure have been exacerbated by documented efforts to circumvent oversight. CIA did not comply with lawful oversight during the DIG's investigation. The behavior significantly impacted Director Gabbard's implementation of several EOs issued during this administration and tasked to the DIG.

(32:17)
The CIA refused to provide information necessary to understand why analytical standards at the CIA were violated. The CIA illegally monitored the computer and phone usage of DIG personnel, their investigations and contact with whistleblowers. These were Americans being spied upon illegally while executing duties directed by the president and under the authority of the director national intelligence. One CIA contractor assisting with the DIG's investigation into the events that transpired between 2022 and 2023 was fired by the CIA one day after meeting with the DIG.

(33:06)
When the DIG ceased operations, the CIA also took back 40 boxes of JFK files and MK ultra files being processed for declassification by DNI Gabbard. The legislative and executive branches will continue to be misinformed if this type of behavior is not addressed. The partial solution to dangerous gain of function has already been laid out in Executive Order 14292, improving the safety and security of biological research. We need a comprehensive review of government funded life science research and a move back to pre-9/11 definitions of gain of function and WMD research, particularly in the IC and DHS. More broadly, we need effective oversight. We must hold agencies responsible for failure to comply with executive order 14292 and oversight must have teeth.

(34:11)
You must be willing to pull the purse strings, and if necessary, convene another church committee. The results of our investigation would have been impossible without whistleblowers willing to come forward. They are indispensable agents for reform. Despite statutory law, agency regulation, and training requirements, whistleblowers are almost never protected. Whistleblower protections always seem to protect the agency. Every time the CIA investigates itself, they coincidentally find no wrongdoing. When they do identify issues, they hold the system responsible. That last statement is a verbatim response from a European Eurasia Mission Center lawyer when the CIA Office of Inspector General did identify shortcomings so serious oversight bodies were holding meetings about it three years after the events transpired. It was in response to the question, was anyone held accountable? Apparently the system is good enough.

(35:37)
The only way we solve this issue is with real accountability for failure to comply with executive and legislative branch oversight and an escape valve where whistleblowers can continue to contribute to mission free from retaliation. All IG elements need to be removed from the agencies and fall under a separate entity controlled by the IC, inspector general. The personnel in IG elements should be 1811 certified with regular DOJ and legislative oversight reporting responsibilities.

(36:16)
Thank you. And my written statement provides far more details related to these issues. I look forward to your questions.

Senator Rand Paul (36:24):

Thank you, Mr. Erdman. Is it your testimony that there is still resistance from the CIA to comply with the law we passed to declassify all the COVID information?

James Erdman III (36:35):

Yes.

Senator Rand Paul (36:39):

One of the things that I think is new today that I'm hearing from your testimony is that from an early period of time, you believe and the information you're aware of is that CIA scientists from an early time after the pandemic began, 2020, 2021, were concluding that the lab leak was the most likely hypothesis?

James Erdman III (37:07):

Yes, Senator. I'd like to offer some qualifications on that as well. A lot of the issues occurred at the interagency space at the National Intelligence Council, the individuals responsible for conducting or writing WMD analysis. And many of those individuals are on JDA from the CIA. But yes, as early as 2020, there were agencies within the IC circulating papers that said, "Hey, there's..." For example, DOE circulated a paper in May of 2020 that said that all the conditions were present for a lab leak. And I could go through the timeline, but yes, my short answer is, yes, periodically throughout 2020 all the way to 2024, yes.

Senator Rand Paul (38:03):

I think the arguments pro and con for what is the evidence on whether this came from a lab or it came from nature are still important. So for years, we've been asking the CIA to produce the scientists, either in a classified setting or a public setting, to discuss the arguments. I don't see any reason why the argument should be classified. One of the arguments that's made publicly is that the source looks like it came from a single source of RNA, not five different types of viruses or 20 different types like you had with SARS 2003, but it came from one source and virtually everybody argues that indicates a lab and not a nature. And so those arguments are important scientific arguments to have, but we've been prevented from having them. We've been preventing from getting all of the declassified information.

(38:50)
But what I think is of importance that's new today is that your testimony is that the CIA scientists were concluding that it was lab, but then there was a 90-day study in 2021 and this study was done by NIC, led by NIC. Tell us what NIC is again.

James Erdman III (39:10):

It's the National Intelligence Council and individuals responsible for writing various WMD and bio-related issues led to that.

Senator Rand Paul (39:19):

So when they had this study, they had CIA scientists telling them, "Look, the evidence, the scientific evidence looks like it came from the lab," but then they brought in Anthony Fauci. Is it your opinion that Anthony Fauci was able to overrule the scientist or get NIC to conclude somehow that there wasn't a conclusion to be added here? We're going to be neutral contradicting what the scientists were telling them?

James Erdman III (39:45):

There's two questions there and I want to break them up into two. One is where were the injection points Dr. Anthony Fauci... Where did Dr. Anthony Fauci and when did he inject himself into the IC? And the other half of that question, and I don't want to extrapolate too much here, is okay, what happened with why was there a change in analysis? So I'll start with the... If it's okay, Dr. Paul.

Senator Rand Paul (40:08):

Sure.

James Erdman III (40:08):

Senator, I'll start with Dr. Anthony Fauci. There were two instances on three February 2020 and four June 2021, Anthony Fauci had contact with the interagency. How to broadly generalize this is that that contact was happily pursued within the IC. They wanted that contact and he provided a curated list of subject matter experts, which coincidentally wrote the proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2. So it's not like he came in and said, You have to do X, Y, and Z. He provided recommendations. It's when you look at what has already been publicly released about Dr. Fauci and then what you're seeing under the curtain at the IC where you realize, okay, there is a narrative that was being generated by his contact not just with experts here in the United States, but experts in Australia and the UK, and that's the public-facing piece. He had tried to sort of keep his hands clear of, "Hey, I didn't have anything to do with the proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2." But in the meantime, he's pushing those authors and individuals that have been in his orbit into the IC as experts.

(41:28)
I'll jump to June 2021. We as the IC, at the NIC, happily pursued those recommendations. In one email, which I'll describe to you, the person in charge of leading the 90-day study, he introduced himself to the community on what they were supposed to be doing and then the community said, he said, "Listen, we've got these people we should be talking to." Another very senior NIC officer sent a direct email to him saying, "Hey, considering that Dr. Fauci is a public health expert, are you sure we should be relying on this? Shouldn't we have a separate set?" And in this instance, the individual responded, "No. In this case, Dr. Anthony Fauci is a subject matter expert." However, that's directly contradicting his public testimony of being a subject matter expert.

Senator Rand Paul (42:29):

Part of the job in intelligence when you interview someone is assessing their truthfulness, their potential biases or conflicts of interest. Did anyone ever bring up that Anthony Fauci approved the research that went on in Wuhan and that it might not be in his interest for the conclusion to be that it came from a lab that he had funded, that there might be a conflict that was... Did anybody ever bring up that he might not be an objective witness?

James Erdman III (42:54):

That was one example of an e-mail. No one laid it out quite that clearly. We were piecing it together from multiple emails, from multiple agencies, multiple documents. It was more subtle than that. Nobody said, "This is happening." And unfortunately, I think they probably should have. It was all out there.

Senator Rand Paul (43:14):

But your conclusion is that changing from the scientific consensus of it being from a lab to a neutral position by the CIA was significantly influenced by Anthony Fauci?

James Erdman III (43:25):

It was significantly influenced by Anthony Fauci's injecting himself into the IC. And to go to the second part of your question about what happened, particularly during the 90-day study, we have documentation that shows that as of August 12th, the CIA was considering calling this a lab leak, August 12th of 2021, then that changed on August 17th of 2021. And unfortunately, because the CIA would not provide us documentation that we asked for, we have no idea why that changed and that's-

Senator Rand Paul (44:02):

And they weren't alone because we know the FBI was coming to the same conclusion that it was lab leak, as well as the FBI.

(44:10)
Senator Ernst.

Joni Ernst (44:14):

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Really appreciate you being here today. I know that this has been a topic for many of us for many years and we continue to get pushback from the federal government as we're trying to uncover the truth to this matter.

(44:32)
For years, folks who discussed a possible COVID lab origin were dismissed as conspiracy theorists. They were censored. Some were even fired from their jobs. If there was or is a conspiracy, then US government officials and US-funded scientists keeping secrets should be publicly questioned under oath about what they knew and when they knew it. But US-funded scientists somehow are still protected from being questioned publicly, even though they received millions of taxpayer dollars from NIH, DHS, DOE, and DOD. And look, folks, I've long warned about a potential government coverup of the truth, which our brave witness, again, thank you, Mr. Erdman, has confirmed to us today.

(45:28)
I've called for answers from Dr. Ralph Baric, an expert virologist who showed the intelligence community in January 2020 before the American people knew about the pandemic that, "We may be on the verge of a global pandemic," yet nothing was done to share this information with the American people. I exposed that the Wuhan lab received $1.4 million in federal funds, fought to cut off every single cent flowing to that lab and I won on this for the taxpayers, and I haven't backed down from fighting for more information on the true COVID origins. And yet Congress is still here six years later begging agencies to share answers and for committees to make relevant documents public. We are tired of Washington coverups. And if they aren't our screw-ups here in the US, why would the US government cover up for the CCP and other countries?

(46:29)
So Mr. Erdman, Americans would have been angry to learn in early 2020 that their government may have played a role in COVID-19's creation. Would you say such thinking influenced the intelligence community to suppress a lab leak origin theory?

James Erdman III (46:49):

I would say that there's evidence in the emails that it was part of the calculus. So it's very difficult. It's more subtle. There's a zeitgeist that runs underneath the analysis, and I'll provide a conversation I had with one of our whistleblowers. I asked and this individual is an incredibly talented scientist and I said, I asked that individual, "Why don't you actually go forward, go public?" There's a lot of reasons not to do that. There's a whole bunch. His comment was, "Nobody wanted the lab league conclusion and I'm concerned that there's too many people willing to make excuses for China in this organization for the wrong reasons." That was pervasive.

(47:53)
And so the individuals we talked to, they never said one for one, it's because they disliked the sitting president or they were trying to cover up, like managers were trying to cover up for China, but it was a pervasive undercurrent is how they described it. I think to answer your question, there's certainly reluctance to provide information that would be geopolitically destabilizing or provide ammunition for actions that maybe they thought would be unwise.

(48:42)
Did I answer your question, Senator?

Joni Ernst (48:44):

Yes, you did. And it's troubling to hear that there's an undercurrent of making excuses for China as well, deeply troubling.

(48:54)
We spend millions of dollars to have an early warning intelligence system, and yet today, I'm hearing the system may have been alerted but no one was acting on the information. Do you think that's an accurate statement?

James Erdman III (49:09):

I can't speak to the health agencies. I can say that the IC was certainly aware early on that it looked like there might be an issue. And so the intelligence that had come in, I don't think they sat on it. I don't think they sat on the intelligence. Now, that speaks to maybe a broader issue with the interaction between IC elements and non-IC elements. Maybe there's some improvements that could be made there, but I didn't see the IC sitting on information extraordinarily long.

Joni Ernst (49:40):

Okay. It could've been agencies then extraneous to the IC.

James Erdman III (49:44):

Right. And the bureaucracy is real. I mean, it's just every day sometimes feels like a fight just to get simple things done and that's just part of working in a large organization. So I'm not making excuses. I'm just saying from the intelligence perspective, I think they identified fairly quickly that this might be an issue.

Joni Ernst (50:05):

And with this as an issue, typically we go back, we do after-action reviews. Do you think this is something that the US government has learned from? I see you grimace. Maybe share a little bit about that because if this is a system-wide across the federal government, how do we stop this from happening again? What lessons have we learned from this, if any? You're still coming forward as a whistleblower. So what have we taken away from this and how do we prevent this from happening in the future, whether it's the spread of a pandemic or what happened within the agency?

James Erdman III (50:47):

I really don't want to go beyond IC too much because I'm not part of the health establishment. I'm not in that organization, but part of the reason the DIG was pulled together as a task force. It was a temporary tool to perform something like an after action review and get at the bottom of what happened. And if you're asking me, did we learn anything? Well, the problem is we did not receive support from the CIA in terms of... And I documented in my transcribed interview and I don't want to go into the specifics of that, but there were very specific lists of information we needed so that we could put into context what happened. And so no, I don't think we've learned our lesson when it comes to transparency and reform. We didn't get the documents we needed.

(51:39)
Senator, your committee issued, what was it, 14 subpoenas in January of 2025 requesting documents, and Director Gabbard did her absolute best to try and force the IC to start producing these documents. And a bunch of them got sent over to ODNI, but we still didn't get all of them. And so what I'll say is we did not get the documents we needed from the CIA, State INR.

(52:09)
And so the lessons in terms of transparency and reform, I don't think those occurred. They can only occur if we actually do a full review of what happened during COVID. And again, there's a fair question, how long do you want to be backwards leaning looking at COVID? That's a fair question. You only have limited resources, limited time, limited personnel and we have limited experts that work within the CIA and they've got forward-facing threats.

(52:39)
The reason COVID is so important is because what we did find is that there is a much larger meta problem sitting on top of COVID. The fact that we have these scientists... And again, I'm not vilifying any of these scientists we contracted in to come to the IC. We desperately need their expertise. And so when we invite them in, we're inviting them in because we want their help. And so we need them. But those same scientists, it's this ecosystem that has a lot of money involved. They're involved with the National Academy of Science, for example, some of them. And National Academy of Science also helps with our WMD policy for the US government. Unfortunately, the National Academy of Science also has a great number of Chinese researchers that co-publish. And so if we're not careful, we're going to have Chinese researchers helping us draft US WMD policy. That's not a good thing. You've got the counter threat reduction program that involves some of these IC scientists.

(53:49)
Once you start cross-pollinating like that, being able to tease out and really provide proper oversight becomes so, so difficult. You're talking about also multiple

James Erdman III (54:00):

... Multiple funding streams from multiple different places. It's a very complex problem. COVID, we'd need the AAR so that we... And it already pointed to the bigger problem, so maybe that's enough.

Senator Joni Ernst (54:12):

Great.

James Erdman III (54:12):

But we need that.

Senator Joni Ernst (54:14):

Thank you, Mr. Erdman. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Senator Rand Paul (54:16):

Senator Ernst, one thing I would interject, as far as lessons from my perspective is, the scientists overseeing gain-of-function research can't be the scientists receiving the money.

Senator Joni Ernst (54:27):

Right.

Senator Rand Paul (54:27):

So we voted last year on the Risky Research Review Act. It'll be a presidential commission, but the scientists that oversee gain-of-function would not be receiving NIH grants. Part of it is that Fauci had a fiefdom, this normal fiefdom, and he was controlling the funds, but then there was a danger of that he doles it out to people who agree with him, and I think that was happening. Senator Moreno?

Senator Joni Ernst (54:47):

Absolutely, point well taken.

Senator Bernie Moreno (54:49):

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Erdman, first of all, thank you for your service to our nation in the past, current, and future. Quick question for you, because I've obviously never been in the CIA. Is it easy to be a whistleblower? Is it easy to think about, "Hey, I'm going to go outside the normal chain of command," or does it come with personal risk, career risk, etc?

James Erdman III (55:13):

I do not believe whistleblower protections are sufficient to protect whistleblowers.

Senator Bernie Moreno (55:18):

So, it's not easy. So, it's not easy for you to be here.

James Erdman III (55:19):

It is not easy.

Senator Bernie Moreno (55:20):

Especially, you're serving now today. What is your reaction when you look at the dais and you see that there's not a single solitary Democrat member here to listen to your testimony? How does that make you feel?

James Erdman III (55:32):

My goal in being here is threefold. I want to talk about COVID.

Senator Bernie Moreno (55:37):

No, I get that, but I'm saying, but you-

James Erdman III (55:39):

I wish they were there. I wish they were there.

Senator Bernie Moreno (55:41):

You're taking personal risk, you're serving the country, you're not partisan. This is not about politics, but somehow it's become about politics because the Democrats don't even want to hear the conversation about what obviously was a grave error that this country made during COVID. And unlike previous situations, there's never been a situation, certainly not in my lifetime, where you had decisions made that affected generations of Americans, kids that were absolutely deprived of their childhood. Businesses that were destroyed. Families that were torn apart. Memories that you'll never get back. Trillions of dollars of economic loss. We should at least have a conversation that isn't partisan, and yet just for the record, there's not a single solitary Democrat Senator that's willing to sit in this chamber and listen to your testimony. I think that's an outrage and an insult to people like you.

(56:35)
So, I'm going to bring a little more levity to what I just said. Back in June of '21, you talked about that, which is interesting. June of '21, I remember June of '21 as something that came up during a comedy show. I'm not somebody who listens to Stephen Colbert, but he had John Stewart on and he said, I'm paraphrasing John Stewart, I will not deliver it with the same kind of comedic punch. But it said, "Oh my God, there's been an outbreak of chocolatey goodness near Hershey, Pennsylvania. What do you think happened? Like, oh, I don't know. Maybe the steam shovel made it with a cocoa bean, or it's maybe the expletive deleted chocolate factory. Maybe that's it." And simple joke talking about it, or maybe the simplest solution is maybe the virus leak happened from the virus lab in the city of Wuhan. Or maybe this chain of events of animals mating to each other all over the world resulted in this virus.

(57:32)
What ended up happening is that John Stewart was immediately tortured. The Washington Post called his joke a dangerous weapon of propaganda. They called him conspiratorial and he got massive personal backlash. That was in June of '21. So, does it turn out that the chocolatey goodness came from the chocolate factory in Hershey, Pennsylvania?

James Erdman III (57:55):

Yeah. Just as Director Ratcliffe said in 2020, it sure looks like the chocolatey factory is actually where the chocolate came from.

Senator Bernie Moreno (58:06):

Yeah. And in fact, it's funny that we're all sitting here today because in that same torture of John Stewart, Steven Colbert said that maybe John Stewart was somehow a spy of Senator Johnson, because Senator Johnson was the one senator that was saying this in the very beginning has continued to hold that accountability. And I applaud Senator Johnson for his absolutely relentless pursuit of the truth in all this.

(58:35)
But let me just spend the last few minutes here talking to you about something that you mentioned, which is near and dear to my heart. And I think all these hearings are important, what you said is super critical. And again, I applaud you for taking and having the courage to come here and your detailed and methodical review of all this, but where's the accountability? This is what I hear from my constituents all over Ohio. It's like, great, you got a hearing, you said this and that happened, but they want to see the perp walks. Where are the people who made these decisions and how do we hold them accountable?

(59:13)
Anthony Fauci is sitting probably sipping margaritas somewhere with his multimillion dollar financial success as a result of duping the American people into putting an experimental virus, vaccine into their bodies or risk losing their jobs. He's not accountable to anybody. He's having a great life. He was featured on Vogue Magazine. He sat there for a cover shot for a day trying to get beauty shots of him, which I imagine the photographer found difficult. Where do you think that we are on a path to accountability?

James Erdman III (59:46):

So I don't work at DOJ, and so I can't speak to prosecutions or perp walks or any of that stuff. But what I'll say is, and I want to go back to the first thing you mentioned here about the American public. I think, and this is my opinion, I'm not expressing myself as a CIA officer or on loan to DNI, whatever it is. I think we really want both Democrats and Republicans to show up and communicate and cooperate on issues, because part of the most important, and you all know this, I'm sorry, legislative branch, they have some power of oversight. You guys are not, you can't make DOJ prosecute anybody. You can reach across the aisle and you can try and get these people to pull the purse strings when agencies are behaving poorly. And from my perspective, and I don't mean to criticize anyone, we need the legislative branch to start pulling purse strings. It's got to be with teeth if you want accountability. And this is perfect, this forum here is perfect. It's about the transparency piece. Can't act unless people know.

(01:01:03)
On the accountability side, I can tell you that Director Gabbard is doing her best to pursue accountability with all of the investigations that were undertaken by the DIG. And we can serve everything up and it's up to DOJ to take action at that point. And I can't speak to DOJ, but yeah.

Senator Bernie Moreno (01:01:25):

No, I understand that. And I think what the American people would even expect at a minimum is just an apology, an apology for putting the country through this, not giving the proper information, I think that would go a long way. But certainly, there was clearly bad actors. Mr. Chairman, you talked about the conflicts of interest. The way you described it was very nice, but ultimately, it's corruption. I mean, when somebody's getting paid to give an opinion that's not fact-based and it leads to personal gain, that's just flat out corruption. And what makes America unique is that we don't allow that kind of corruption in our government. And so, I think ultimately where this all has to land is there has to be explicit accountability for individuals who profited off of the misinformation, the shaming of Americans, and the systematic destruction of lots and lots of things in this country.

(01:02:17)
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

James Erdman III (01:02:18):

Thank you, Senator.

Senator Rand Paul (01:02:20):

Senator Johnson.

Senator Ron Johnson (01:02:22):

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and another excellent hearing. I feel your pain and frustration, in terms of trying to do oversight investigation and issuing subpoenas that are not responded to, certainly not in full, barely responded to, generally. What responses we get are generally non-responsive responses, just a bunch of bureaucratic gobbledygooks. So again, I appreciate your efforts though.

(01:02:48)
Mr. Erdman, I appreciate you coming forward. One thing I know as former chairman of the full committee, now as Chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations is, we do not protect whistleblowers. We have laws dating back over 100 years and the government is the worst offender in terms of retaliating against whistleblowers, even though there's all kinds of these legal protections. So, I appreciate you doing this.

(01:03:14)
I'll also note, because nothing shocks me anymore with our colleagues from the other side of the aisle, but I'm shocked that not one of them showed up here. I think one showed up to register as a tenants, and then gone. I agree with you. It is well past time for us to have a church committee. We're not going to get bipartisan support for a church committee, there's no curiosity on the other side about what's happening inside the deep state. And that's really my question. Who is running the deep state? I've got example after example in agency after agency, very legitimate oversight requests. I subpoena documents, you don't get squat.

(01:03:59)
Now I asked for your testimony last night, and I realized and I really appreciate the fact that the committee staff and Chairman Paul is very, very concerned about retaliation against you. Apparently, they didn't clear your testimony here at the CIA. Is that true?

James Erdman III (01:04:17):

No.

Senator Ron Johnson (01:04:17):

So you're appearing as a true whistleblower publicly right off the bat. I'll do, and I'm sure Senator Paul and the staff, we'll do everything we can to prevent retaliation. What is your game plan after this? You're done in DNI and the DIG organization. Do you plan on going back to CIA?

James Erdman III (01:04:37):

I return to CIA on, what was it, April? I'm back at CIA. I just took a couple of weeks vacation after the... It was a long year and I was tired, so I took some time off. And now I'm back at the CIA.

Senator Ron Johnson (01:04:47):

So, were you welcomed back?

James Erdman III (01:04:50):

I just arrived and I've got a desk and they're talking to me about what comes next.

Senator Ron Johnson (01:04:55):

I mean, do you have any concerns about me keeping this? Because originally we said you can't keep this after the hearing, but it sounds like now I can keep it. I mean, do you have a concern? Because again, I don't want to harm you in terms of what you've written here. I haven't had a chance to go through it yet.

James Erdman III (01:05:08):

You can keep it.

Senator Ron Johnson (01:05:09):

Okay. Should we distribute this publicly?

James Erdman III (01:05:13):

Please hold on that.

Senator Ron Johnson (01:05:14):

For the time being, I will. John Ratcliffe was very helpful when he was in that position at DNI. Now he's Director of the CIA. What is preventing the CIA from totally cooperating with the DNI?

James Erdman III (01:05:37):

I don't know. So-

Senator Ron Johnson (01:05:39):

You've been in the CIA. Who's running this show?

James Erdman III (01:05:44):

Here's what I'll say. We had requests. We have a formal process that we sent those requests over and I detailed in the transcribed interview the dates and what those requests were for. It appeared to be bureaucratic slow rolling until the government shutdown happened.

Senator Ron Johnson (01:06:00):

Well, that is the technique they use.

James Erdman III (01:06:03):

Yes.

Senator Ron Johnson (01:06:03):

I mean, they look at every administration or every director of CIA and if they don't agree with them, this too shall pass. Right? They just wait them out. I mean, that's happening right now in both of our investigations. So again, I'm calling for a church-like commission. We'll call it the Paul-Johnson Commission. Okay? We need to figure out who runs the deep state, but in my final three minutes, because I held what I thought was a blockbuster hearing two weeks ago.

James Erdman III (01:06:31):

It was very good.

Senator Ron Johnson (01:06:33):

And this is on my investigation in terms of the harms done by the COVID injection. I'm going to talk about it right now because it's not being covered by the legacy media. Alternate media, yes, Fox News, Fox Business has had me on. I went on supposed to be on CNN last week, and I sent them my report and told them that's what I want to talk about. They canceled the appearance. [inaudible 01:06:59], "Oh, that's not why." Sure it is.

(01:07:01)
So this is what, and I can do this in two minutes and 20 seconds. This is what we uncovered. This is what is being covered up by now the legacy media. On March 1st of 2021, Dr. Peter Marks, head of CBER, the organization, then FDA that approves vaccines and also supposed to surveil those vaccines post-market force safety, was given a multi-page briefing by the main data mining analysts within FDA working with the inventor of the algorithm they used to analyze the VAERS, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. That briefing told Dr. Marks that the current algorithm, because of the nature of the massive number of claims coming into VAERS. By the way, from 1990 until 2020, on average, about 280 deaths are reported in VAERS associated with a vaccine. 2021, it's over 21,000. Nothing to see here. But anyway, so they're using an algorithm. They were warned that this algorithm, because the Moderna and Pfizer are so close together, the way they're analyzing is going to mask and hide safety signals. That's March 1st, 2021.

(01:08:16)
26 days later, a new state-of-the-art algorithm, developed by the inventor of the original algorithm, was presented to senior FDA officials, showing 49 cases of extreme masking, 25 safety signals, including sudden cardiac death, pulmonary infarction, bell's palsy, different types of strokes. Month after month after month, they continue to do this data mining. They continue to show additional safety signals. Did Peter Marks, did Anthony Fauci, did President Biden go to the American public and say, "Hang on here. We've got some data. We've got some concerns." No, no. They blamed the unvaccinated for continuing the pandemic. This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated, we need to mandate this.

(01:09:12)
This is what government does. This is what the deep state does. I can't explain it all, my investigation now, because I finally got documents. This would never have happened if we didn't have documents. And by the way, just like we found that David Morens' email that now has resulted in prosecution, where he has a foiling, he showed him how to make emails disappear if you send me something sensitive to my Gmail. We have the same types of evidence in our report. We need to get to the bottom of this, and right now I'm just using this moment. I need the mainstream media, CBS, ABC, CNN, to step forward and start covering what is a major stand. How many thousands, tens, hundreds of thousands of people are permanently disabled or possibly lost their life because our FDA hid the fact that there was safety signals screaming at them with the COVID injection? So again, you can't answer all my questions in terms of who's, but we need to figure out who is running this deep state.

(01:10:20)
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator Rand Paul (01:10:22):

Senator Johnson, I completely concur with the call for a church committee, but I'll tell you how difficult it is. Church committee was like 1975, 50 some odd years ago. I've been trying to get the classified version of the church committee for over two years, but I'm being blocked by the intel committee, including someone from our own party is blocking having me... They've shown me a room with 400 boxes and I can go look in all the boxes to see if I can find it. My staff's not allowed to go in the room, but they will not reveal to me something that's 50 years old that should be declassified for the public, much less for me.

Senator Ron Johnson (01:10:55):

Maybe we should go together, it'd probably only takes us about four or five years to dig through all the boxes.

Senator Rand Paul (01:10:58):

That's right, that's right. Senator Hawley.

Senator Josh Hawley (01:11:01):

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Erdman, thank you for being here. In March of 2023, the Senate unanimously passed legislation requiring the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to declassify all, I believe the exact language is, "Declassify any and all information related to potential links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origins of COVID-19." I have some familiarity with this legislation because I wrote it. It passed the House unanimously. President Biden signed it into law under, I think, popular duress. As you may remember... Well, first of all, are you familiar with this law?

James Erdman III (01:11:36):

Oh, of course, yes.

Senator Josh Hawley (01:11:37):

As you may recall, it set a statutory deadline of just a couple of months later, which the Biden Administration promptly ignored and blew through. When they finally did release the report, I think we've got a picture of it here that'll appear over my shoulder, it was all of five pages. Here it is, wait for it. Five pages. Remember, the law says any and all information. Five pages, heavily redacted, even the five pages. I think one of those pages is a cover, a cover note or something. Yeah, here it is. The executive summary, five pages, this is according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, this is any and all information related to COVID-19 and the Wuhan Virology Lab.

(01:12:17)
Now, you've been on this task force that has reviewed these documents. Is this all the information the United States government had?

James Erdman III (01:12:25):

That is not all of the information. And I'll tell you a little story about that, if you'd like.

Senator Josh Hawley (01:12:30):

Please.

James Erdman III (01:12:30):

A story about your five pages there. So there was a classified report being written at the time all of this was going on, and I assumed as I'm reading through the documents that they would just take that classified report, which didn't look like that, and they would just redact it. And because I'm reading through documents, but that is not what happened. They decided to write a different paper, instead of what was already-

Senator Josh Hawley (01:12:57):

You say they, who's they?

James Erdman III (01:12:59):

The National Intelligence Council. [inaudible 01:13:00]-

Senator Josh Hawley (01:13:00):

The National Intelligence Council was at the time that the law passed, was doing a thorough review or doing a review. We don't know how thorough. How many pages? You've been on this task force, you've gotten a sense of if it's not five pages, how many pages worth of information would you guess the United States government was in possession of related to Wuhan lab and COVID, possible links?

James Erdman III (01:13:22):

I can tell you that Director Gabbard is working through, I believe, 2,000 pages.

Senator Josh Hawley (01:13:27):

2,000?

James Erdman III (01:13:28):

That they're trying to get released in the first batch. The law states yes, any and all, but there's still the requirement to run it through the different agencies to ensure that there's not some sources and methods. But there's like 2,000 pages that are-

Senator Josh Hawley (01:13:44):

2,000 pages, 2,000 pages. I want to show you what Avril Haines, Director Haines said to me when I wrote to her, Senator Braun and I wrote to her following this outrageous, ridiculous report. She wrote back to me and said, "Well, we declassified only what we could without endangering sources and methods, only what we could." Five pages of summary that itself has redactions. The five pages have redactions. And you're telling me there are literally thousands of documents. Why are they hiding all of this material?

James Erdman III (01:14:17):

I can tell you that the interagency process of declassification is highly bureaucratic, and that is being worked. And I think you saw just a few days ago, Director Gabbard released some information about the labs.

Senator Josh Hawley (01:14:29):

Was Director Haines, Avril Haines, was she involved in making the decision not to release the material?

James Erdman III (01:14:36):

I don't have any proof that she was involved in the direct decision. I have no emails saying that directly, but-

Senator Josh Hawley (01:14:44):

It was her office and it's her signature on the letter to me, it's her office that sent the five pages. She's the one who said, "This is what we have. This is all we have." You're telling me there were 2,000 plus documents and they sent us five.

James Erdman III (01:14:54):

No, I'm telling you that the first swath of documents that we're looking to-

Senator Josh Hawley (01:14:58):

Oh, I see. Many more.

James Erdman III (01:14:58):

There's many, many more than that.

Senator Josh Hawley (01:14:59):

I gotcha. Many, many more. Let me tell you what this so called five-page report, what it said in its substance, to the extent there was any. They said number one, that nothing that was researched at the Wuhan lab could plausibly be a progenitor of SARS-CoV-2. Number two, they said there is no evidence of any research related incident involving Wuhan employees that might have been related to the pandemic. Now, in your experience, given what you have seen, are those true statements?

James Erdman III (01:15:31):

Some of that would have to be covered and classified, but no, they're not true. If we wanted to get into details, I don't believe that's true.

Senator Josh Hawley (01:15:39):

So the United States government first deliberately violated a law passed by Congress, signed by the president, that ordered them to release all information related to the Wuhan lab, number one. Number two, they then violated the law again by withholding thousands and thousands of pages that they had at the time and knew were covered by the law. And number three, the conclusion, so called, they released to the public are false. If that is not a coverup, I don't know what is. And if our elected officials and unelected officials in this case in the IC and ODNI, if they can get by with blatantly violating the statutes of this country and lying to the American people, I'm sorry, but we don't have a democracy anymore. I don't know what it is, but it's not a democracy because we the people aren't in charge. These people are in charge and they're lying to us every single day.

(01:16:32)
You said in your opening statement that Dr. Fauci, speaking of someone who's not exactly a truth teller, that Dr. Fauci intervened to put his thumb on the scale of what information the intelligence community, the IC could review when they did their initial assessments of whether or not the Wuhan lab was linked to COVID. What exactly did he do?

James Erdman III (01:16:55):

So, let me clarify that. So he reached in and he provided this list of scientists and subject matter experts that we should talk to. And it's not like he's saying, "You will go talk to them." He doesn't have the power to do that, technically. It's just that the bureaucracy in place at the time was perfectly happy to pursue those recommendations, even when there was a number of individuals who expressed concern saying, at least one for sure that said, "Are you sure we want to do this? He's a policymaker and we need to have our intelligence cycle."

Senator Josh Hawley (01:17:31):

And he had a point of view, did he not?

James Erdman III (01:17:33):

He certainly did. And here's-

Senator Josh Hawley (01:17:34):

And what was that point of view? Just refresh our memories.

James Erdman III (01:17:37):

He believes it's natural origin. He still does.

Senator Josh Hawley (01:17:40):

Of course. I mean, he said this over and over. Now he would have reason to, given that he supported gain-of-function research through the Wuhan Lab, lied about it to Congress, lied about it repeatedly to the chairman, as I recall. So his hands are dirty in this, and yet here he is intervening behind the scenes. It's bad enough that he's out there misleading the public. Behind the scenes, he's trying to intervene to stop our own intelligence community who are supposed to work for the public from actually accurately assessing the evidence. This is unbelievable. This is unbelievable. And then people wonder, gee, why are the American people not trusting of elected officials? I wonder, why are they? I'll tell you why, because they're repeatedly, we are repeatedly lied to by these people, lied to and lied to and lied to.

(01:18:27)
I want to thank you, Mr. Erdman, for your testimony. I just want to note, I think we've only scratched the surface here. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for calling this hearing. And I just want to point out when you've got a witness who's saying under oath that the report that the government issued lied to the American people, that it is false, we've got a big problem in this country. We've got a big, big problem and we haven't begun to solve it yet.

(01:18:49)
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator Rand Paul (01:18:51):

Senator Moody.

Senator Ashley Moody (01:18:53):

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think this is one of the most important hearings we will hold during this administration. I think when the world, when the country went mad, and I don't care if you consider yourself a blue state or a red state, the country went mad and people were craving leadership and leadership that truly was based on science, not someone that alleged they were following science and seemed to care more about controlling the public. I think this is one of the most important hearings and I think everyone that actually showed up today and you see who is here, involved, and taking part in this hearing, are the ones that want on behalf of the American people who are, by the way, are supposed to be in charge of the United States of America, want to get to the bottom of what happened. And not just because that's right, so that the people that are in charge of this nation understood what happened, but so that this never happens again.

(01:19:55)
And if we are trying to prevent a government that is trying to control a populace based on nothing, based on no justification and making sure that that never happens again, I just want it to be very clear to everyone in this room or anyone who has taken the time to watch that cares about their country and understands what it means to protect freedom. I just want them to see who showed up today and who is participating and who has thanked you for coming out bravely and disclosing these facts, what happened, and your opinion based on your years, decades of experience.

(01:20:33)
I, for one, hailing from the great free state of Florida. Florida used to be known for flamingos, we're now known for freedom. That is because what took place over the last administration and when churches were closed, when businesses were closed, when schools were closed, when people were shut up in their apartments, when families were prohibited from socializing and gathering, many were kept from their loved ones when they died,

Senator Ashley Moody (01:21:00):

... all under this guidance of government leading based on science. We really have to go back and question that because that cannot happen in this country. And I think many of us that were in charge at the time questioned how we ever allowed that to happen. And certainly in Florida, I am so proud, along with Governor DeSantis, we led against that tide in many respects. And when people were still being told to, "Stay at home. Don't let your kids go to school. Don't go to church," all of these things that seem insane right now, we didn't. We stood up for the truth. We tried our best to discern what was true, what was not, what didn't make sense.

(01:21:49)
And let me tell you why things didn't make sense. First of all, you had your secretary of HHS, which was basically invisible, checked out. Those are words of the Biden administration at the time. Officials from the Biden administration said, "Secretary Becerra was invisible. Checked out. An unfortunate choice for the role." And then, you had Dr. Fauci who came out and contradicted himself constantly. At one point, he even admitted later, he told people, people shouldn't be walking around with masks on. And later he said that was because we were trying to control the supply for healthcare professionals, it wasn't based on any science. But then later he told everyone to wear masks repeatedly. The six-foot rule seemed to have been just crafted out of thin air with no basis in science whatsoever. In fact, he said, "That rule sort of just appeared," when he testified and that, "Guidance on the shutdown of schools and small businesses was arbitrary and not based on any science."

(01:22:54)
So, I just want to make sure the American people hear that. You had a government who's supposed to be limited and stay out of people's lives coming in and offering guidance. Many times it was done under mandates to close businesses, people's livelihoods, to keep children from being educated, to keep people from expressing their faith and gathering to show freedom of religion and their faith and expression. I mean, unbelievable what happened during the COVID years. I was so proud of my state. Along with Governor DeSantis, we launched a grand jury investigation because the federal government sure wasn't doing it. And we got to the bottom of some of what was being said publicly by those that we had trusted in these positions and how that was not actually the truth and the science. That was where the name the Free State of Florida has come from.

(01:23:56)
And I'm so glad now to be here as one of the newest United States senators bringing that experience, that grand jury investigation, everything that we did differently in Florida and stood up to the madness because that is how the people remain in charge of their government. In the grand jury investigation that we did, we followed the evidence. We found that many of those policies, including masking, lockdown mandates, they lacked sufficient scientific basis. And they, in fact, caused significant harm to Floridians. The same grand jury found a pattern... I'm quoting the grand jury here. This is a nonpartisan group, acquired from the community to judge facts. "A pattern of deceptive and obfuscatory behavior from both big pharma and the federal agencies charged with regulating them with respect to the COVID vaccines."

(01:24:51)
So, it appears from everything that we found from our own investigation, an unbiased, totally separate review of what was being said publicly by the federal government compared to what was actually based in science, it found that most of what was said in the events surrounding it was a public health establishment that was fixated on controlling the public and forcing narratives, rather than protecting public health or discovering the truth.

(01:25:19)
And so, I am grateful that you are willing to be here today. I know that this is under subpoena, but certainly, it takes courage to be here and to be a whistleblower that can get accountability for the American people. Florida was years ahead of the federal government's supposed experts, we're proud of that, but this is so important.

(01:25:45)
And so, I want to know, and I have one question, we're getting to the what, what happened. We were glad that Florida led on that. Even while people remained locked down, we were trying to get to the answers. What happened? But in all of your reviews and what you've been able to compile and what you're saying today, what is the why? Why?

James Erdman III (01:26:09):

Why did the coverup happen? I think there's a lot of incentives, misaligned incentives that have been created because of this highly opaque and complex system of laboratories, life science research, and the IC is just one component of that. Why did it happen inside the CIA and inside D&I and inside the interagency space when they were doing the analysis over the course of four years? Part of it is iron rice bowls, your normal bureaucratic issues where one agency has this, another agency has that. There was groupthink. You could see it happening in real time as you read from beginning to end. I'll give you a couple examples.

(01:27:03)
Every time there was an open source publication that came out, they're very good at grabbing that and kicking it up for the contracted scientists, the BSEG, to take a look at and assess. And the goal, it seemed, it always leaned one direction. They never took the publications from Sorenson and Dalgleish who came out very early, I think it was July 2020, that one of the best papers written was open source by Sorenson and Dalgleish. They never took those papers and said, "Wow, we've got a lot here. We need to make sure we get this added in." Or Dr. Steven Quay, for example, who had a lot to say about COVID origins.

(01:27:45)
It was always one direction and because the interagency space seemed intent on pushing it that way... And why the interagency space? I think the interagency space, I'm talking about the National Intelligence Council and the people responsible for that. I mean, these are people who have relationships with the National Academy of Scientists and the National Academy of Sciences. They've got relationships with the WMD community and they're all part of the same, I don't know, ecosystem. The planets are all revolving around the same star. And so, you get groupthink.

(01:28:24)
There's a multitude of reasons. I didn't find any smoking gun where they said, "Well, we got to cover this up because for sure the US government paid for research in Wuhan, China." But they were certainly well-aware of predict, they were well-aware of the diffuse proposal, that had circulated and they had those products available to them. I think you get enough people shouting something down, it gets shouted down, and that happened repeatedly.

(01:28:56)
If I can take just a moment, particularly about the scientists that are brought forward. I really, really want to emphasize a couple of things and one of it is we can't vilify these scientists. I'm going to give a very short anecdote and I hope I'm not going over on time or anything like that, but when I got hired to the CIA, I can't tell you how proud I was. I really couldn't believe that they hired me. I'm sure there's some friends who are like, "Yeah, I can't believe it either." But they hired me because they saw potential to be able to be somebody who could recruit spies and steal secrets, that's my job.

(01:29:43)
Imagine you're a scientist. Imagine the US government comes to you and says, "Listen, sir, you are a specialist in a field no one else knows about." And in fact, the whole point of a PhD is to push beyond what's known further than anybody else in a very rarefied field. Imagine you're a scientist and the CIA comes up to you and says... or the NIC, the intelligence community comes up to you and says, "You're special, not because we see potential, but because we know you're special and we need your help." We can't vilify these people who wanted to help.

(01:30:26)
We can, however... Boy, I might be contradicting myself here, but the system definitely needs a look because the system has been put in place now and you've got these same people that we've said, "You're important to the IC." We just haven't done the proper work to ensure that those people who are important to the IC aren't cross-pollinated all over in other places, so that they can incentivize the research that we need done or the white papers we need written. We have to have a holistic overview and I think it's really hard to have one agency do their review, another agency do their review, the legislative branch do their review. In this case, it is a team sport.

Senator Rand Paul (01:31:10):

So, one answer also, Senator Moody, to your question about the why people think, "Well, gosh, was there a conspiracy where all these evil people had their hands together and they were conspiring to do something bad?" And I think George Carlin put it the best. He said, "It isn't required that you come up with a conspiracy where interests converge." And I think the interest is we funded a lot of dangerous research. Accidents have happened. This was an accident. In all likelihood, this was an accident. Even the Chinese probably didn't want this to happen in Wuhan, it was an accident. But the interest is that if you funded that research for 10 years, wouldn't I logically want to ask you why, why you did this funding?

(01:31:52)
And so, there are dozens of people throughout government who did cover this up, maybe hundreds, but they don't even know each other necessarily, but they had a hand in funding this research through the years. They've been in favor of it. It's been a big debate. For 20 some odd years, there's been a huge debate, maybe longer. People think this is the first virus that got out. It's not as much reported, but one of the most famous viruses that got out was the Russian flu of 1977. And we're not sure it came from Russia or where it came from, but the interesting thing is nobody over 24 got the flu. Zero. Not one person. Why? Because the Russian flu of 1977 had the exact same RNA structure as a flu in 1953 that had been kept in a lab somewhere. How do you get an identical virus 30 years later? Viruses mutate every couple months, like COVID has. There is no way to have an identical virus unless you got it from a lab. So, proof positive that the 1977 flu actually came out of a lab. An accident. Once again, an accident.

(01:32:54)
There's a woman who's written about this, I think her last name is Young. She says that over a period of years, like 1,500 major accidents that she's cataloged. So, it's not only about malfeasance, it's about safety of these labs. In fact, some people were finally convinced that this came from Wuhan because it was a BSL-2 instead of a BSL-4 for much of the time, that it didn't have enough safety precautions. But even the safest one, the 4 still has accidents. So, maybe some of these experiments we ought to reconsider whether we do with them.

Senator Ashley Moody (01:33:25):

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And it just goes to show why it's helpful to have a doctor as our chairman. You could also be a witness.

Senator Rand Paul (01:33:31):

Thank you. We're going to conclude pretty quickly. I'm going to give Senator Johnson another chance if you have another question.

Senator Ron Johnson (01:33:41):

I've got a quick question that I want to go someplace else. In September 2023, we apparently had a CI whistleblower come forward and there are news articles written about this, that six of the seven analysts to described this were bribed to change their analysis. Is that true?

James Erdman III (01:33:58):

No. So, there's some clarifications on that. And I thank you for bringing up this question, Senator Johnson, because this is one of the things I wanted to make sure the record was corrected. And if I have just a few minutes here to talk through this, there was new information that came out in 2022 and it forced the community to try and conduct a relook. There were 10 CIA scientists, I'm talking from the CIA side now, not on the NIC side, 10 CIA scientists that were said, "Why don't you go ahead and do a COVID relook?" On that team, there were seven SMEs, subject matter experts, technical experts with lab experience, medical experience. And so, they began their relook.

(01:34:50)
And by the time they wrote their paper, they wrote a paper and they said, "We're assessing this as a lab leak," according to multiple whistleblowers, 8 of the 10 were definitely leaning in on lab leak. They sent that paper, that draft paper up to the Weapons and Counterproliferation Center front office and said, "Take a look." And magically, a new report shows up that allegedly contradicted the information that had come in earlier that year. The multiple people we spoke to said, "Yeah, it didn't really contradict it," but they were told, "Go back to the drawing board and do a reassessment." So, the interagency got involved, they were having discussions, they go back to the drawing board. And by the time 2023 rolls around, they've got their answer. They say six of the seven technical people on that team, so there's 10 people on the team, six of the seven technical experts say, " Yep, we still think it's a lab leak. We still think it's a lab leak." And they were sticking to their guns.

(01:36:07)
Management changed the analytic line. They changed the conclusion to a non-consensus call. Actually, worse than that, they said that... The exact words were... I don't want to get this wrong. Excuse me. " We may never precisely know the origin of SARS-CoV-2. Precisely." Precisely is not a term analysts use. They use like, low-confidence, medium-confidence, yes, no. Precisely is a word you use when you want to deliberately end discussion because do you know how many resources we'd need to precisely know the origin of SARS-CoV-2?

Senator Ron Johnson (01:36:56):

So, again, I want the chairman to indulge me a little bit more here. There's no bribes paid? This was just a management decision. They overruled what they-

James Erdman III (01:37:04):

Overruled.

Senator Ron Johnson (01:37:05):

Okay.

James Erdman III (01:37:06):

But the financial piece definitely needs to be looked into because they did receive an EPA. They got it. It's 1,500 bucks.

Senator Ron Johnson (01:37:12):

Okay. So, it may be true then?

James Erdman III (01:37:14):

No, no, no, no, no. Let me be very clear, there were no bribes. They received an exceptional performance award. They were upset with it and it was not a bribe. But what I will say, the people who were not-

Senator Ron Johnson (01:37:26):

They were rewarded for...

James Erdman III (01:37:28):

Their work. They didn't know they were going to get it. They were not-

Senator Ron Johnson (01:37:30):

I gotcha. Okay. I got you and I understand this distinction. One point and one question. Just received this from Liz Lyons, the CIA director of public affairs. "The committee acted in bad faith by subpoenaing an agency officer for testimony today without notifying CIA. Despite having already obtained closed-door testimony from the individual previously, the witness testifying today is not appearing as a whistleblower in pursuant of the truth, but instead in response to the subpoena issued by Chairman Paul. This proceeding amounts to nothing more than a dishonest political theater masquerading as a congressional hearing as the CIA has already assessed, COVID-19 most likely originated from the lab leak and efforts to undermine that conclusion are disingenuous."

(01:38:09)
I'm calling on CIA Director Ratcliffe and this person to apologize to Chairman Paul and this committee. This is not political theater. I have years and years and years of built-up frustration of agencies like the CIA, Department of Justice, the FBI, HHS, snubbing our oversight, giving us the big middle finger.

(01:38:33)
And that really leads me into my question. You talked about how proud you were, okay? I can imagine that. My belief is there I'd say most people serving in government, all these agencies are doing good work. They're patriots. Why aren't there more people like you? I mean, you saw Senator Hawley's the five-page snub, the five-page middle finger saying, " Any and all, this is it." And people inside the agencies know that's not the truth. They know that is a big fat lie.

(01:39:12)
What happens inside the agency that people, good Americans, patriotic Americans, people who believe in democracy witness that and realize the agency they're working for is lying bold face to legitimate congressional oversight, legitimate congressional investigations to the American people. What is causing this?

James Erdman III (01:39:40):

Two answers. One, we need more leaders like Director Gabbard who pulls together a taskforce of people to actually pursue this, despite the difficulty in wrangling agencies to do the right thing. I think the second thing I'll say is it's a minority of officers. I mean, most of the people joined the CIA are barrel-chested freedom fighters. They're out there wanting to do the right thing. As you matriculate upwards into the bureaucracy, I just think that it gets easier and easier to find people who are more willing to get along.

(01:40:25)
And if we want to link this back to COVID, you had a bunch of Refuseniks out there that said no. And they were trying to push these people out and what you really need in these organizations, you can't have the whole organization saying no to everything because nothing gets done, but you got to retain the people who are sometimes a little more difficult to deal with, more willing to say no over and over. And I think we've created a milquetoast bureaucracy. When I first joined the agency, the chiefs of offices had a lot of power, and then modernization happened and they watered everything down and you didn't... The accountability piece has to be there, otherwise this is just going to keep happening.

Senator Ron Johnson (01:41:15):

Well, again, I appreciate you coming forward. Again, I'm calling on Director Ratcliffe and that communications person. This committee, this chairman needs an apology. This is not political theater. This is serious oversight work. This is what the American people need to see and I just wish our Democrat colleagues had any level of curiosity what's happening inside the deep state.

(01:41:35)
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator Rand Paul (01:41:37):

Thank you. And I completely concur. And I would also like to respond to the CIA spokesman. They say that we have already obtained closed-door testimony. Well, closed-door testimony doesn't provide oversight. Public testimony provides oversight. We have asked them for public testimony and for oversight. We would love to have the scientists, the six or seven scientists that were commissioned to look at this. We'd love to see their report. Why would we not be allowed to see their report? I can't even read that in private, but that should be public, the science. If there are sources and methods, mark them out, redact them, but we should be able to see that.

(01:42:13)
But for them to have the gall to say, "Oh, we allowed the witness to testify in private, and that should be enough." No, you were told by Congress unanimously to declassify this material and you send us five pages. You mentioned maybe 2,000 pages. DOE has a report, that's got to be 40 or 50 pages, but the base documents for DOE's report probably run into the hundreds of pages just for that one report. And they did a great analysis of this, but still most of that is not available to the public. Why does it need to be available? Because this is going to happen again and we need to be prepared and we need to talk about it.

(01:42:51)
One of the other things we didn't get to in this hearing, but we need to talk to, how do you prepare for the next pandemic? Well, one of the things that actually worked was monoclonal antibodies. We need to be talking about how we can quickly produce them again, how we can quickly get started on things like that. What worked and what didn't work. Masks didn't work. Six feet of distancing, there was no science. They say, "Follow the science," and yet, it looks like everything that happened at the CIA was the politicians overruling the scientists. The scientists were concluding this came from the lab, from a lab leak in all probability. The politicians were overturning them once at 2:00 in the morning. So, that is one of the takeaways from this is that yes, follow the science and the scientists and that the scientists need to not have a conflict of interest.

(01:43:37)
Which leads me to the final point I'll make before we conclude. I applaud the Trump administration for an executive order saying, "No more gain-of-function." It is head and shoulders above anything. The Biden administration really didn't do much of anything on this. The Trump administration is trying to live by that. The reason it won't work forever is that people who have a weaselly way with words, let's say Anthony Fauci, will come back into play and half of his lieutenants probably still work over there. One of them will get in power again and all they will simply say is, "Oh, creating that new virus that grows 10 times faster and grows better in human cells, well, that's not gain-of-function," because that's what Anthony Fauci was doing. He was still doing the gain-of-function research. He was just saying, "Oh, the way I look at the definition, that's not really."

(01:44:26)
So, we do need a commission. And what I proposed is the Risky Research Review Act. It'd be a presidential commission. It'll have scientists on it, they will be experts, but they will not be currently in the employ of government, competing for grants. I think that is a conflict of interest. They have to be people outside of it. There also will be some people who are national security experts as well. And we have to look at the list of things.

(01:44:53)
One scientist, Dr. Esfelt, ordered off the internet under Biden's policy, he ordered snippets of DNA from here and here, chopped them up, put them together, and he made the Spanish flu. And he told the FBI he was doing it because he wanted to prove a point. He didn't create the infectious portion of the Spanish flu, but he said, "Look, I can do it by just ordering DNA." So, there are a lot of things that have to be addressed, and unfortunately, it's somehow a part it's an issue and we're not getting anywhere. But I want to applaud you for your courage in coming forward. You did come forward at the response of a subpoena, that is a lawful subpoena and I see no reason that anyone should try to punish you. If anybody does try to punish you, I can promise you that we will defend you.

(01:45:36)
Thank you very much.

James Erdman III (01:45:37):

Thank you, Senator Paul.

Senator Rand Paul (01:45:38):

Meeting's adjourned.

James Erdman III (01:45:38):

Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:45:39):

[inaudible 01:45:40].

Senator Rand Paul (01:45:40):

Yep. I would like to thank our witness for joining us here today to share his testimony and expertise with the committee. The record for this hearing will remain open till 5:00 PM on Wednesday, May 13th, 2026 for the submission of statements and questions.

(01:45:54)
For the record, the hearing is now adjourned. Thank you.

Speaker X (01:45:56):

[inaudible 01:45:56].

Senator Rand Paul (01:45:56):

Oh, thanks.

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