Why wasn’t this much bigger news?

They didn’t SAY that COVID came from a lab leak. They even say that they didn’t say it came from a lab leak.

But the Department of Health and Human Services pretty much admits that all the conditions for a lab leak of a virus produced by gain-of-function research that the Wuhan lab definitely was doing certainly could have happened. Far from being a conspiracy theory, the rationale for permanently cutting off US funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology lays out the case for a leak of an engineered virus from the WIV for all the world to see.

Beege does a great job giving an overview of some of what was said and done, and the bottom line is that the Biden Administration is cutting off all funding to the WIV because it performs unsafe experiments in an unsafe manner and lies to everybody about it to cover up its mistakes.

What we are witnessing here is what is called a “Limited Hangout,” which entered the vernacular during the Watergate scandal when John Erlichman suggested a “modified limited hangout” strategy for dealing with revelations arising from the scandal.

Wikipedia has a nice summary of the meaning:

According to Victor Marchetti, a former special assistant to the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), a limited hangout is “spy jargon for a favorite and frequently used gimmick of the clandestine professionals. When their veil of secrecy is shredded and they can no longer rely on a phony cover story to misinform the public, they resort to admitting—sometimes even volunteering—some of the truth while still managing to withhold the key and damaging facts in the case. The public, however, is usually so intrigued by the new information that it never thinks to pursue the matter further.” While used by the CIA and other intelligence organizations, the tactic has become popularized in the corporate and political spheres.

If you read the memo from the Department you see that this is exactly what is happening here. The memo lays out a case against the WIV that it performed unauthorized gain-of-function experiments that indeed resulted in a virus with enhanced pathogenicity in labs with almost no biosafety and that the US was funding this research through the truly vile EcoHealth Alliance. They and EcoHealth then have been covering up the evidence for years, including hiding data that is required to be turned over to the US under the provisions of the grant.

Pretty much the only thing they didn’t say was “China created this virus and it escaped from the lab.”

Limited hangout. Reveal just enough to satisfy the curiosity, say you admitted everything, and wait for it to blow over.

The funding that was previously denied to have existed has now been stopped. Nothing to see here, move on.

Biden cuts off funding to Wuhan Institute of Virology linked to COVID-19 outbreak: Reporthttps://t.co/Q2eNOHJiW5

— Robert W Malone, MD (@RWMaloneMD) July 19, 2023

As Beege pointed out yesterday, the WIV has been involved in a serious lab leak incident–the escape of SARS into the population. Ironically COVID is also known as SARS-COV-2.

You have probably noticed that over the past few months, the evidence has kept piling up that the virus escaped from the lab. For years many of us suspected that it did, and since sometime in 2021 it was clearly a likelihood, but the dam appears to be breaking now. In the media, it has gone from a conspiracy theory to a possibility to a likelihood over 3 years. Facebook even quit censoring the idea! Wow!

While there is perhaps SLIGHTLY more evidence now than in February 2020, the fact is that all scientists involved in evaluating the origin of the virus even back then knew that the escape theory of COVID’s origins was always plausible, and many thought it quite likely. The leaked emails and Slack messages from the scientists who wrote the “Proximal Origin” paper that was used to debunk the lab leak theory show that even they didn’t believe what they were writing.

This is what one of the scientists who argued that the accusation that the virus escaped from the WIV was absurd said in private to a coauthor:

Andersen wrote that “the main issue is that accidental release is in fact highly likely—it’s not some fringe theory. I absolutely agree that we can’t prove one way or the other, but we never will be able to—however, that doesn’t mean that by default the data is currently much more suggestive of a natural origin as opposed to e.g. passage. It is not—the furin cleavage site is very hard to explain”—referring to a feature of the virus that concerned the scientists at the time.

He authored the paper that Fauci used to attack the lab leak theory. He wrote that to his colleague as they argued exactly the opposite in public.

Everybody who insisted that the lab leak theory was a “conspiracy theory” was lying to you. The current “limited hangout” is just another extension of that lie. Since everybody knows that a lab leak is plausible, admit that without admitting that they themselves lied. Concede just enough to preserve credibility with the public.

I reached out to the White Coat Waste Project folks for their reaction, given how prominent they have been in unearthing a lot of the evidence. They sent me a statement that I thought I would share:

Statement from Justin Goodman, Senior Vice President, White Coat Waste Project:

“Since April 2020when we first exposed Fauci’s funding for dangerous gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan animal lab that are directly linked to COVID’s likely Patient Zero, we have been leading successful efforts with Congress that ensured the white coats in Wuhan haven’t received any more taxpayer funding, including getting the infamous animal testing lab disqualified from NIH funding earlier this year. We first called on the Biden White House to permanently cut the Wuhan animal lab’s funding in February 2021and are glad the Administration has finally come around afterlobbying againstour efforts to cut off the CCP’s treacherous bioagent lab and others like it.”

One of the Senators who has worked closely on this issue with WCW and other advocacy groups–and who took a lot of grief for supposedly giving credence to conspiracy theorists–is Joni Ernst. Her people sent me a statement as well:

“After years of my advocacy, the Wuhan Lab has finally been defunded. However, it is gravely concerning that U.S. dollars were allowed to be spent in support of the CCP’s malign influence and undermine American interests in the first place. The truth is, China’s state-run Wuhan Institute of Virology should never have received U.S. support for its dangerous experiments on bat coronaviruses, which is why I have been working to shine the light on this massive oversight of taxpayer dollars. I am committed to making sure no other batty studies at the expense of taxpayers are flying under the radar and will continue to work to ensure full public transparency for every penny sent to an institution in China.” –Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa)

Unfortunately, as satisfying as it is to have the WIV cut off from American funds, and as frustrating but satisfying to have the US finally admit grudgingly that the lab leak theory is not just plausible but likely, I still can’t get over the fact that the EcoHealth Alliance is still getting US funding. They just got funding renewed!

In what world does that make sense? Peter Daszak should be in jail, not living high off the hog on the taxpayers’ dime. It is infuriating!

It is striking to me that so few people have focused on the EcoHealth Alliance as one of the worst villains in this mess. They did everything they could to push this very dangerous research forward and did as much as the Chinese to cover everything up. The government knows they lied about gain-of-function research and are still withholding evidence.

So why are they skating? How much dirt do they have on people, and if not, who are their friends in government who are cleaning up the mess for them?

My guess is that 3-5 years from now everybody will treat the lab leak theory as established fact, and that the MSM will just shrug and claim they never doubted it much. Once the political punch is gone–it’s “old news”–people can admit the truth and everybody feels good about it.

From censorship to “everybody knew that” in a few years. No big deal. People like you and me will watch the videos proving how they changed their stories, but nobody will care. Old news. Move along.