NIH Ends Biodefense Focus, Signs Pact With Department Of War

Authored by Paul D. Thacker via The DisInformation Chronicle,

Senior officials inside the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) were baffled late last week when Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro issued a statement that Pentagon officials are trying to "raid" NIH funds to cover defense shortfalls. "The administration must provide Congress with a full accounting of how this interagency agreement was developed and exactly how much taxpayer money it is trying to transfer to DOD," wrote DeLauro, who serves as the top Democrat on House Appropriations.

DeLauro's statement spurred a flurry of media reports, including a fact-addled piece by Nature Magazine's Max Koslov, who falsely implied NIH was transferring hundreds of millions of dollars in research monies to the Department of War (DOW). Koslov also erred in misreporting that NIH maintains a biodefense research portfolio, even though NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya announced that he was cutting NIH's biodefense portfolio in an essay last January.

Ironically, Bhattacharya's essay appeared in Nature Medicine, a journal published by Koslov's own employer.

"Koslov is a fiction writer," said an exasperated HHS official. "Absolute fiction. Our comms people at NIH don't respond to him because he lies."

DOW released the interagency agreement with NIH on Friday, which shows no money has been transferred to NIH. The agreement was signed in early August by Bhattacharya and Robert Kadlec, a physician and former CIA officer who wrote most of our biodefense laws while working for several decades as a congressional staffer. Kadlec is now an assistant secretary at DOW in charge of counterterrorism and biodefense.

According to HHS and NIH officials, who have negotiated the agreement with Kadlec since February, Kadlec asked NIH to transfer the $2 billion allocated to NIH for biodefense over to DOW. NIH denied this request, although DOW officials have continued to press the $2 billion matter in private discussions.

The agreement allows two types of cooperation. One is called 7600A which lists the rules and terms for cooperation on a project, while a 7600B allows transfer of funds as payment. NIH has not signed any 7600Bs, and an official negotiating with DOW said NIH doesn't have any dollars to transfer to the Pentagon, because the money is already spent.

"The money on emerging infectious diseases is booked up for years in advance with contracts and grants," said the NIH staffer.

Part of the confusion stems from conflicting definitions and terminology deployed over the last two decades by Tony Fauci while he ran the biodefense program at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

As reported by Ashley Rindsberg in UnHerd, Fauci began the NIH's biodefense program in 2003 with billions of dollars directed to him by Vice President Dick Cheney, following an increase in biodefense spending after 9/11 and the anthrax attacks in 2001. This moved biodefense for the first time out of Pentagon oversight, while providing Fauci direct access to the White House and a $2 billion pot of money each year since.

But over succeeding decades Fauci began mixing the dollars designated for biodefense with programs targeted at other infectious diseases - eroding the distinction between public health research and scientific studies for biodefense. "Fauci spread the bioterrorism money into programs on emerging diseases," said the NIH official. "The reality is there's no $2 billion to give."

A senior Trump appointee who has worked with Bhattacharya and Kadlec to hammer out the agreement said that DeLauro is right to ask hard questions, which NIH needs to answer. But after the COVID pandemic mess, NIH is not the place to run bioterror research. "Look, everyone in this field knows that Kadlec is an operator," said the Trump official. "But Kadlec is an experienced hand and we need aggressive oversight on this research."

Referring to NIH money Fauci directed to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, he added, "What was the point of NIAID funding a BSL-4 lab in a foreign country? Nobody has explained that."

For the last three decades, Kadlec has labored to counter biological weapons for an alphabet soup of various agencies - JSOC, DOD, CIA, DHS, and the UN. Kadlec also wrote the critical legislation that undergirds America's biodefense infrastructure while a staffer for Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina.

Now the country's leading biodefense lobbyist at DLA Piper, Burr represents the University of North Carolina and sits on the board of READDI, a North Carolina biodefense company founded by virologist Ralph Baric.

In a 2023 interview with The DisInformation Chronicle, Kadlec pointed to a 2015 virus study published by Ralph Baric and funded by Fauci as evidence that the virology community had been dishonest with the American public about the scientific evidence that the pandemic started from a lab. Fauci and others, Kadlec said, served as a "cabal" to bury this evidence in an "information operation."

Last April, I reported for RealClearInvestigations that the NIH had yanked all of Baric's grants after determining that his research helped create the COVID virus. UNC put Baric on leave and he retired from the university in June.

"We gave Fauci billions and he burned the house down," said the Trump official working with NIH and DOW. "The world was on fire for two years and millions died. And if Democrats want the NIH to remain in the biodefense business, I wish them luck on selling voters on that."

A senior HHS official said it remains unclear how much money might eventually migrate over to DOW but it won't be anywhere near $2 billion as biodefense research is now gone from NIH's portfolio. Nonetheless, NIH faces an uphill battle convincing Congress that they are no longer in the biodefense game.

After determining it was biodefense research and unsafe for Americans, NIH dissolved an $82 million Fauci initiative last June called the Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases (CREID). CREID grantees included Peter Daszak of the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance and Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research. But earlier this year, lobbyists inserted language into an appropriations bill that forces NIH to spend $18.2 million to fund CREID centers once again.

"We're not funding Kristian Andersen and that virologist crew," said the senior HHS official. "We're out of biodefense, and that CREID money will go to people looking at infectious diseases in public health."