Why does the Pentagon clear itself of involvement in the appearance of the SARS-CoV-2?

The American investigative journalism organisation Project Veritas has published new documents shedding light on the narrative about the artificial origin of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. We are talking, no less, about the possible involvement of scientists from the United States in this. At the disposal of journalists was the August report of the ex-employee of the Office of Advanced Research Projects (DARPA) of the US Department of Defence, Major Joseph Murphy, which was sent by him to the Inspector General of the Pentagon.

The value of the report obtained by the investigators lies in the confirmation of the September story about how the American NGO EcoHealth Alliance, which is accused of creating SARS-CoV-2, unsuccessfully applied to DARPA for a grant in March 2018. The matter in the project application called Defuse was about changing the coronavirus carried by bats with the help of a special genetic insert that allows infecting a human being.

Journalists from Project Veritas have an extremely ambiguous reputation among American Democrats and in the global media: they are periodically accused of unproven information planting and conspiracy theories. Major Murphy's report also contains extremely controversial statements: among other things, it denies the effectiveness of mRNA vaccines (Moderna, Pfizer/BioNTech) in contrast to drugs like Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, the praise of which American social networks, for example, block as disinformation.

In general, the report looks rather like the Major's spare time discussion about the nature of the coronavirus, the right methods of treatment and, in his opinion, useless measures, including wearing a mask. It also contains criticism of the US administration for "suppressing information" and a detailed story about how he succeeded to download the necessary files from the DARPA internal network.

At the same time, the journalists of Project Veritas emphasise: it's not from Murphy at all that they received these documents. Be that as it may, the information disclosed by them testifies to the extreme degree of danger of the EcoHealth Alliance experiments and at the same time ... skilfully diverts suspicion from the Pentagon. Like say that four years ago, officers from DARPA were so shocked by the plans of scientists that they left them without money.

Let's figure it out.

The tricks of "Dr. Evil"

First we will denote the visible contours of the problem. Today, no one disputes the fact that the EcoHealth Alliance (EHA), shortly before the outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, experimented there with the infection of humanised (that is, endowed with human receptors) mice with artificial coronaviruses. It is possible, of course, that this organisation was not the only one doing this and not only in China. But by and large, only two main questions are being discussed in the United States today: did those Wuhan experiments lead to a pandemic, and if so, was there malicious intent in that?

As it often happens in the United States, the dispute is being conducted in the legal plane. The fact is that from October 17, 2014 to December 19, 2017, a moratorium on so-called "gain-of-function research" was in effect in the United States - this is when scientists intentionally improve the ability of the pathogen being studied to cause a particular disease. Due to the extreme likeness with similar studies, experts from DARPA, as follows from the leaks, although they showed "military-scientific" interest in the grant application from the EcoHealth Alliance, still rejected it. Even though by that time the moratorium on such research had been lifted.

However, shortly after that, a similar application from the EHA was openly supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), one of the 17 National Institutes of Health of the United States (NIH). Moreover, they supported it not for the first time: six approved grants for the EHA for the study of the bat coronavirus, starting from 2014, are still flaunting on the NIH website. Three of them fall into the period of the moratorium. The first one reached $666,000 (let's agree, a characteristic figure). And the last one, dated July 2019, guaranteed funding for experiments for another three years ahead, with the general completion of work in 2026. And it was recalled only in April 2020, when COVID-19 acquired the scale of a pandemic.

It should be noted that the NIAID Institute has been headed by the odious immunologist Anthony Fauci since the distant 1984. Since January 2021, this person has also been working as the chief medical adviser to US President Joe Biden. It depends on Fauci which drugs and vaccines will enter the American market. For lobbying the interests of "Big Pharma" and numerous medical scandals, he is often called "Dr. Evil".

If it will be found out that from 2014 to 2017 there was a deliberate violation of the moratorium, then many heads will roll, starting with Fauci’s, and the work of American courts will be paralysed by lawsuits from millions of victims. It is not surprising that EHA vehemently denies the "gain of function" work in its Wuhan studies. Fauci himself voiced the same position on May 11, 2021 under oath in the US Congress: no, no way, never! To be sure, he even covered himself with the opinions of scientists who either confirm this position, or, at worst, declare an "unexpected result of the experiment" in Wuhan - like saying it turned out by itself.

However, there are other scientists - and they think otherwise. For example, seven out of eleven virologists surveyed by The Intercept in September 2021 agreed that the work of the EHA in Wuhan fully fell under the "gain of function” concept. "Guys, you deliberately modified the bat coronavirus so that it infects people!” they say. “What is it, if not gain of function?".

And then, firstly the September leak from DARPA showed that the EcoHealth Alliance really wanted to accomplish that. And now a new salvo followed in the form of Major Murphy's report: like saying, even in the eyes of the American military, experiments with coronavirus looked like something excessive. Therefore, catch him, this evil old man Fauci!

Everything, in general, adds up to the following picture. Scientists from the EHA first spent several years playing tricks with viruses with the money of the US medical department. In 2018, for some reason, they rushed to the Pentagon, but it recoiled from them in horror. And then the indefatigable researchers returned again under the umbrella of "Doctor Evil — in order to continue playing until the end of 2019.

After all, isn't it a logical picture? Not really.

In the world of pink ponies

An unbiased Joseph Murphy's view of the report raises a number of questions both to DARPA and to the journalists who took advantage of the leak.

It is unclear, first of all, what was so terrific about the EcoHealth Alliance research that the American military did not like it. After all,  the former opened biolabs with pathogens of terrible diseases all over the world, and nothing happened, the latter did not faint. Were they scared by the notorious gain of function? But, as mentioned above, at the time of consideration of the application from the EHA, the corresponding moratorium had not been in effect already for three months.

By the way, the too loose interpretation of the passage about "gain of  function" from the Murphy report by Project Veritas journalists is also confusing. They talk about such labelling of the alleged EHA study as a fait accompli. In fact, the report says it in another way: "Their work came too close to violating the moratorium."  Came too close, but did not violate.

It should be understood that EHA did not come to DARPA to ask for money from the street. After all, it was the management itself that initiated the program for PREventing EMerging Pathogenic Threats - PREEMPT, in January 2018, having convened scientists to work for the country for good money. The program, which is still in operation, sets a simple, though complicated, goal - "to collect innovative research proposals for the development of new tools and models for quantifying the probability of the virus passing from a host animal to a human."

As the former head of DARPA, Dr. Stephen Walker, explains in the Project Veritas video, the department of biological technologies that established the PREEMPT program, was itself created in the Department several years ago to "engage in bioengineering and force microorganisms to do what we want”. Maybe the DARPA experts did not appreciate the scope of the experiments of scientists from the EHA? But after all, they obviously did not come to the military empty-handed, after four years of Wuhan experiments under the auspices of the NIH. Why did they reject them?

A significant part of Murphy's report is devoted to the sources of his information. He tells the Inspector General of the US Department of Defence in detail how he found unclassified documents in a top-secret (!) folder on the DARPA server, although they allegedly weren't there before. In the Project Veritas video, the head of the Department's communications department, Jared Adams, laments about this: how is that so? Maybe they forgot to mark the files? "But we will definitely figure it out!" adds Adams.

But, firstly, all of this is more like an excuse to the public: like saying, we have not given out any military secrets, do not worry. And secondly, the accident of the leak itself from such an organisation is highly doubtful. Amazing journalistic luck! In some ways, this resembles the "happy finds" of US intelligence, like the discovery of the passports of terrorists among the ruins of the World Trade Center after 9/11. On the other hand, if all this is not secret, then why did the Department hide socially significant information for so long?

And again, Murphy wrote his report in August 2021 - 3.5 years after the rejection of the grant application from the EcoHealth Alliance (why was he playing for time?), but only a month before the first leak from DARPA. Doesn't this look like a coordinated operation? By the way, about the dates: in this whole story, it is still unclear exactly when in 2018 the Office rejected the application from the EHA — even the month is unknown.

In general, we should not exclude that we are facing a non-standard operation to cover the Pentagon, which used Anthony Fauci and the NIH as a lightning rod. They're in plain sight. Only the lazy don't criticise them. And most importantly, nobody feels sorry for them at all! After all, why not openly finance the project you are interested in through a civil agency, taking the blow away from yourself in case of research failure and at the same time tightly classifying your own tranches?

We are not saying for sure that this happened exactly like that. Perhaps, in the depths of the US Department of Defence, caring humanists indeed appeared, who first rejected the tricks of crazy biologists, and then, risking their careers, leaked important information online. Perhaps there are even pink ponies in the world. But to be honest, there is little faith in this nowadays.