The Deep State’s Double Game: How U.S. Spy Agencies Buried the Lab Leak to Protect Their Own Wuhan Cronies, By Charles Taylor (Florida)
Where intelligence meets virology, a damning truth emerges: America's spy agencies weren't just slow to acknowledge the COVID-19 lab leak, they actively suppressed it to shield their own collaborators. New documents, pried loose by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on October 30, 2025, reveal that Ralph Baric, the University of North Carolina virologist who engineered chimeric coronaviruses alongside the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), wasn't some peripheral academic. He was a regular advisor to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), briefing them quarterly on biological threats. And in January 2020, as the pandemic ignited, Baric himself warned ODNI that COVID might stem from a WIV lab accident, only for the agency to dismiss such intel as "misinformation" a year later, when it implicated him. This isn't coincidence; it's cover-up, a self-preserving rot that cost millions of lives and trillions in economic carnage. From CIA flirtations in 2015 to ODNI's stonewalling under Biden, the intelligence community cozied up to Wuhan enablers, then lied to bury the fallout. Conservatives have long warned of the deep state's entanglements abroad, now we see how they imported catastrophe home.
Ralph Baric isn't a household name, but he should be the poster child for gain-of-function folly. For decades, this UNC Chapel Hill professor has pioneered "chimeric" viruses, Frankenstein bugs spliced from bat samples to test human infectivity. His 2015 collaboration with WIV's Shi Zhengli produced a paper on SARS-like bat coronaviruses "with potential for human emergence," funded by USAID's PREDICT program (a CIA-adjacent pipeline for virus hunting). That same year, ODNI brokered a CIA sit-down with Baric on "coronavirus evolution and possible natural human adaptation," eerie prescience, given COVID's furin cleavage site, a feature Baric's team proposed engineering in the rejected 2018 DEFUSE grant to DARPA.
By 2020, Baric was embedded: Four annual ODNI briefings, plus a January 23 "B Group" presentation (ODNI's Biological Sciences Experts Group) where he flagged WIV's BSL-2 sloppiness with epidemic-ready viruses. His slides? Explicit: An "Origins" section listing "Accidental Release" from WIV as plausible, noting their sequencing of thousands of SARS-like strains under lax safety. Baric even scribbled in a DEFUSE draft that public freak-out over WIV's standards was inevitable, yet ODNI kept him close, facilitating his intel whispers.
This wasn't oversight; it was operational. USAID's PREDICT (2009–2020) shovelled samples to Wuhan, with CIA fingerprints via historical fronts. An FBI agent even coached Baric on FOIA dodges for his WIV emails in 2024. Baric: Scientist by day, spook asset by decree.
Fast-forward to January 2021: State Department pushes to declassify lab-leak cables, but ODNI balks — "it would call out actions that we ourselves are doing." Why? Because the dots connected straight to Baric's doorstep. ODNI's National Counterproliferation and Biosecurity Center (NCBC) Director Kathryn Brinsfield, a doctor, no less, branded a government lab-leak briefing "misinformation," backed by aide Zach Bernstein (zero science creds). National Intelligence Council alum Adrienne Keen, Biden's origins review shepherd, stonewalled scientists probing the genome.
ODNI's 2021 reports? Genome analysis omitted entirely, one agency even filed a formal complaint. CIA dragged its feet until January 2025, when new Director John Ratcliffe (Trump's ex-DNI) finally greenlit the lab-leak nod, over Langley holdouts. Trump's Deputy NSA Matt Pottinger tasked CIA digs in 2020? They whiffed, then leaked smears of his "conspiratorial" China hawkishness.
Baric's intel coziness didn't just enable risky research, it erased accountability when it blew up. WIV's BSL-2 roulette with human-adapted bugs? Flagged privately, ignored publicly. Fauci's February 2020 huddle with Baric & Co. birthed the "Proximal Origin" paper, torching lab-leak sceptics as "conspiracy theorists." Result? Mandates, shutdowns, and a narrative that vilified Trump for "xenophobia" while China laughed.
X is ablaze: "Baric briefed ODNI on lab leak then helped Fauci bury it. Deep state owns the virus." Posts demand: "Defund the spooks who funded the plague." Polls? 60% of Americans now back lab-leak; trust in intel? In the toilet.
Enter DNI Tulsi Gabbard (I-HI, Trump appointee): She axed NCBC in August 2025 amid DCNF probes, launching a quiet origins task force. Paul's October 30 letter demands unredacted docs by November 13, emails on GOF, DEFUSE, PREDICT, from Fauci to Daszak. Hearings loom: "The IC knew more, said less, to protect the machine."
Ratcliffe's CIA now touts "transparency," but scars linger: Five years late, after Biden's crew ran interference. Conservatives cheer: This is MAGA accountability, drain the swamp, expose the sins.
The lab leak isn't theory; it's probability, per FBI, DOE, and now CIA. Baric's silence? Deafening. ODNI's disbandment? A start. But real justice demands:
Ban GOF globally — no more playing God with pandemics.
Full declassification — every email, every briefing.
Probe the funders — USAID, NIH, CIA fronts.
Indict if warranted — if suppression shielded crimes, heads roll.
America didn't just suffer COVID; we subsidised it, then gaslit ourselves. No more. Let Paul's hearings unleash the files, Gabbard's scalpel cut deeper. The deep state bet on secrets; conservatives bet on truth.
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