A (4:44)

Great to be with you.

B (4:45)

All right, tell us who. Before we get into the story, I was actually hoping you could tell us just who Ralph Baric actually is. Like, who is this figure at the center of your. Your latest scoop? And then we'll dive into a little bit of what you found.

A (4:59)

So Ralph Barrick is probably the biggest coronavirus expert in the world. One of his colleagues actually referred to him in an email that I read as the big cheese in coronaviruses. He innovated what's called reverse engineering techniques related to coronaviruses. So taking the genome of a virus and assembling a live virus from it, he also innovated this technique that he called no seem, after the no seem gnats that are common in his home state of North Carolina, where you can chop a gene into a new virus without any traces of engineering. He's at the University of North Carolina and was working very closely with the Wuhan Institute of Virology prior to Covid. They had access to this immense store of coronaviruses, and he was the big cheese in engineering coronaviruses. So it was a natural collaboration there.

B (6:09)

So it's really significant that Barrick is the person at the center of the story that you wrote up. The headline in the Daily Caller News foundation article is, spy Agencies Cozied up to Wuhan Virologists Before Lying About Pandemic. Barrick is the Virologist in question. And this is from new documents released by Senator rand Paul on October 30th. You went through them, Emily, and found that Barrick was being brought into the loop by spy agencies. Can you break down a little bit of what you found in these emails? Yeah.

A (6:38)

So, first of all, there's always been a little bit of suspicion that Barrick had some sort of ties to US Intel. First of all, why are we doing viral engineering work that doesn't seem to have civilian applications? Right. So this thing called gain of function research, where you take a virus that circulates in animals, allow it to transmit in humans, and even make it more contagious or transmissible in humans, there aren't many vaccines that we can point to as having occurred downstream from that sort of research. So, you know, you have to ask the question, there is no civilian application, then what is the actual application? So there's been a lot of speculation that Barrick was working with this high security lab in Wuhan precisely because he was collecting information for U.S. intel. And there are other clues, too. So the Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic last year released this letter showing that on responding to Freedom of Information requests for his research and his emails with the Wuhan lab, why would the FBI be personally involved in helping a virologist in North Carolina respond to FOIA requests for his records? Right. And then we broke the story earlier this year that USAID had shipped something like 11,000 samples to the Wuhan Institute of Virology without any plans to get them back. And as we know now, USAID often functions as a front for the CIA. So there were questions about whether that in itself had, you know, some sort of national security premise rather than just a public health justification. These new emails confirm that Barrick was a top advisor on biological threats to America's top spy agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and that he met with them quarterly. This is something that I reported a few months ago, that there were Suspicions that he. And clues that he. That he advised the odni. It's interesting. He gave a deposition to the committee I mentioned, and they actually mistranscribed the group within the odni, the. The acronym for it. But piecing together some clues sleuth online, and I was able to confirm that that referred to this group within the odd. Dealing with biological threats. So these emails confirm those clues. And they also showed that the CIA, in a meeting facilitated by the odni, approached Barrick about some sort of project related to coronaviruses and human adaptation related to coronaviruses, which sounds a little bit like gain of function research. Unfortunately, we don't have many details beyond those emails, but I hope more details are forthcoming.

B (9:48)

And there are a couple of details in the story already that implicate two different presidential administrations, which is not at all unusual when you're researching and reporting out what's happening in the intelligence community. A whole lot doesn't usually change between presidential administrations and the intelligence community historically. So this is, as you mentioned, the emails are from September 2015. So that would be the Obama administration's ODNI. And then during the Trump administration. You have been on this for years, Emily. It looks like the DNI was, or we see it clearly, the DNI is dismissing the lab leak, publicly dismissing the lab leak, despite having all of this knowledge of what was happening behind closed doors during the Obama era and then likely into the Trump era as well. Can you help us understand a little bit about some of the subterfuge that. That we can look at as probably happening between both administrations?

A (10:40)

Absolutely, yeah. We got some early clues that political appointees in Trump 1.0 were facing obstacles to declassifying intelligence related to the origins of COVID Now, CIA Director John Radcliffe was DNI in Trump 1.0 in 2020 during that pandemic period. And he tried to declassify records that, you know, he thought pointed clearly to a lab origin of COVID but face resistance, particularly from Langley, which is a reference to the CIA. These documents showing ties between Barrick and the CIA, potentially even on a coronavirus project, might speak to why it was that the CIA was so reluctant to declassify that intelligence because it could implicate the agency. And within ODNI, there is a specific office related to biological threats. And sources tell me that they received a presentation from people within the intelligence community who had interviewed Barrick, who felt that all of the intelligence pointed to a lab leak. And they were dismissed as conspiracy theorists, essentially as peddling misinformation Another detail that's interesting here is that Barrick himself advised the OTNI in January 2020. So within weeks of the pandemic emerging that a lab leak was possible, that they were working on these SARS related coronaviruses at a low biosafety level. Of course, what he omitted is that he was integral to this project on SARS related coronaviruses at a low biosafety level. And in fact he had submitted a grant report in 2018. So one year before the pandemic emerged, where he laid out research that some scientists liken to a blueprint for Covid. He was interested in viruses that have many of the same unique features that we see in Covid, a fear and cleavage site specifically, and that he knew that they would be doing this work in Wuhan at a low biosafety level, but concealed that from the intended funder in the US because he knew that Americans would, quote, unquote, freak out about the shoddy standards in Wuhan. So a lot of questions here, but yes, so some consistency sort of within the deep state during Trump 1 and then into the Biden era in ODNI specifically and the CIA too, on suppressing intelligence related to a possible lab origin. And I think Barrick's connection to those very agencies he is, is a, is another puzzle piece and why that might have been.

B (13:46)

And actually I have that. I know you're a reporter, so this gets into a little bit of speculation. I do, though, wonder if you've come across information or if you have any of your own personal theories to the extent that you're willing to, you know, speculate a bit about whether this intelligence operation was to keep an eye on what Chinese bio scientists were up to or whether it was to work with them and use these lab conditions to do gain of function fern cleavage type research. Like, why were we getting any closer to the answer as to why the US Was funding this lab? Was it for the sake of intelligence? Was it for the sake of collaborating with Chinese scientists for our intelligence? Can you tell us any more, Emily, about like do these documents not just closer to one theory or the other about why the heck we had a presence over there with this research? Okay, so to hear the rest of this fascinating conversation with Emily Kopp of the Daily Caller News foundation, where we discuss Senator Rand Paul, we discuss the administration's cooperation with Senator Paul and Emily and other reporters in getting to the bottom of this critical, essential story, because remember, we are not guaranteed a break from pandemic. Something could happen at any time or horrifying, but true. And we need to have a government that is transparent and that is doing all the research it's doing in this, say, in this space, safely and with accountability. So this is a very important story. Emily also talks about her fellow journalists. Why? What explains the lack of curiosity in the media and what we know about why our government was doing this research to begin with and why our intelligence community was involved. So head on over to Endocrine TV to get a premium membership and see the rest of the conversation with Emily Koppover over there.