“I just wanted to say a personal thank you on behalf of our staff and collaborators, for publicly standing up and stating that the scientific evidence supports a natural origin for COVID-19 from a bat-to-human spillover, not a lab release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

That was British zoologist Peter Daszak to National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director Dr. Anthony Fauci, on April 18, 2020, one of the many emails recently revealed by the Washington Post through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Even with redactions, the emails unleash devastating revelations.

Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance had received $3.7 million in grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China. Fauci maintained that the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 could not have been engineered in a lab, and that prompted the thank-you note from Daszak. He branded as a “conspiracy theory,” the possibility that the virus could have escaped from the lab, or was the result of the WIV’s dangerous gain-of-function research, which makes viruses more deadly and transmissible.

Richard H. Ebright, professor of chemical biology at Rutgers University and laboratory director at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology, charged that Daszak had a conflict of interest with the WIV. Ebright told reporters, “The WHO and Lancet reviews cannot be considered credible investigations.”

In an April 19, 2020 email, Daszak told Fauci, “From my perspective, your comments are brave, and coming from your trusted voice, will help dispel the myths being spun around the virus’s origins.” Fauci responded to Daszak’s email on April 19, writing, “Many thanks for your kind note.” Fauci’s emails are also decidedly at odds with what he told the public.

On April 3, 2020, Fauci told PBS, “If we had known that this was highly transmissible early on when it was just in China, I think other countries would have maybe been more quick on the trigger to try and inhibit travel from China to their country.”

On April 18, 2020, Fauci told George Gao, head of China’s CDC, “We will get through this together. Thank you for your kind note. All is well despite some crazy people in this world.”

In a Feb. 5, 2020 email, Fauci wrote, “Masks are really for infected people to prevent them from spreading infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection.” On Feb. 7, 2020, Fauci told CNN, “A lot of people are wearing masks that don’t need them.”

Fauci labeled an April 16, 2020 email “conspiracy gains momentum” and linked to a Fox News story claiming the pandemic originated in a Chinese lab. The next day, in a White House news conference, Fauci said a study by “a group of highly qualified evolutionary virologists” confirmed that it is “totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human.”

In similar style, on March 28, 2021, Fauci told Margaret Brennan of CBS News that “there is no evidence that suggests the virus was created in a laboratory.” In May 2021, Fauci told reporters he is “not convinced” that COVID-19 developed naturally. The Biden adviser then reversed course again, contending it was “highly likely,” that the virus “occurred naturally before spreading from animal to human.” As it happens, the current pandemic is not the first time Fauci aimed to control the narrative, and attacked those who challenge the government line.

Fauci earned a medical degree in 1966 but his bio shows no advanced degrees in molecular biology or biochemistry. In 1984, Fauci became head of the NIAID and in that role contended that AIDS was caused by a virus known as HIV. Peter H. Duesberg, professor of molecular and cell biology at UC Berkeley, found no scientific evidence for that claim.

As Duesberg explained in “Inventing the AIDS Virus,” HIV is “one of the many harmless passenger viruses that cause no clinical symptoms during the acute infection,” and he was hardly alone. Scientists challenging the HIV-AIDS hypothesis included Nobel laureate Kary Mullis; Charles Thomas, former professor of microbiology at Harvard University; and biologist and science historian Robert Root-Bernstein, author of “Rethinking AIDS.”

Unable to refute Duesberg scientifically, Fauci did his best to “cancel” the distinguished medical scientist. In 1988, the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour sent camera crews to interview Duesberg, but the PBS show pulled the interview and replaced it with a short segment of Fauci attacking Duesberg.

In 1989, Fauci complained in an editorial that Duesberg’s ideas were getting too much publicity. ABC’s “Good Morning America” flew Duesberg to New York for an in-studio interview. That same evening, the Berkeley professor got word that the interview had been cancelled. When viewers tuned in, they saw Fauci.

In 1993, Fauci tried unsuccessfully to get Duesberg cancelled from ABC’s “Day One” program. In 1994, Ted Koppel of ABC’s “Nightline” agreed to give Duesberg a hearing, but when the show finally aired, there was Fauci once again.

As Duesberg contended, Fauci was the government mouthpiece for “AIDS thought control.” The NIAID boss is now the government mouthpiece for pandemic thought control, contending that there is “no evidence” that the virus that causes COVID-19 was engineered in a laboratory. In reality, the evidence has been steadily mounting, and it points to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

In addition to the NIH funding, the WIV received shipments of deadly pathogens from a lab in Canada. The pathogens illegally transferred to China by Dr. Xiangguo Qiu included Ebola Makona, Mayinga, Kikwit, Ivory Coast, Bundibugyo, Sudan Boniface, Sudan Gulu, MA-Ebov, GP-Ebov, GP-Sudan, Henra, Nipah Malaysia, and Nipah Bangladesh. These would all be useful in gain-of-function research.

Fauci’s emails should launch a full investigation of the NIAID boss, the highest paid bureaucrat in the federal government. Investigators should also reveal the communications of Dr. Nancy Messonnier, whose 2020 briefings on the pandemic conformed remarkably to the position of China and the World Health Organization, and who has now conveniently resigned from the CDC. Her testimony, under oath, could prove of considerable interest.

Peter Duesberg, still around at the time of this writing, would make a fine witness on the record of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the NIH, and the CDC. The veteran virologist could also render an expert analysis of the virus that emerged from Wuhan and caused so much death and destruction around the world.