“Whistleblower” testimony gets nowhere on origins
For Americans with a genuine interest in the “origins” of the COVID-19 event, yesterday’s U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing featuring the “whistleblower” testimony of James Erdman was another mis-directional exercise.
Much of what was said by Mr. Erdman, a CIA Senior Operations Officer, and the theatrical Senators who spoke, including Rand Paul, contributed nothing in the way of answers to the most basic questions about the alleged culprit called SARS-CoV-2.
The “whistle” purportedly being blown chiefly regarded Anthony Fauci and CIA scientific analysts “downplaying” and “covering up” the “possibility” that a lab-origin hypothesis could be true. Never mind that a lab-based scenario was never far from investors’ and the public’s consciousness, thanks to seeds planted early on in legacy and alternative media, and persistently pursued thereafter.
The players at the hearing were very sure that it’s mostly Fauci’s fault, and that had he and others refrained from their suppression activities and stopped playing footsie with GoF years ago, “pandemic” policies would have played out differently, or a pandemic would not have occurred at all.
Whether a pandemic did occur, and how, wasn’t discussed, of course. That question will never be entertained as long as legislators who were at the helm in March 2020 are the ones overseeing and participating in these performances.
The positioning of Erdman as a whistleblower is comical, as though someone deemed a good fit for CIA duties is permitted to break ranks and publicly disclose critical secret information and remain alive, but it’s no mistake and carries two significant upsides, from the State-Sponsored narrative point of view. One, it casts the illusion that an important development has occurred and progress toward truth, accountability, and justice is being made. Two, it allows things to be said out loud and interpreted or misconstrued as official CIA statements.
The last authorized written word from the agency regarding “COVID-19 pandemic origins” was released in January 2025 and, as shown in this reaction, said nothing about a leak, a virus, or China.
Mr. Erdman’s prepared remarks went further than his employer’s did:
I’m here today to discuss the COVID cover-up, the national security implications associated with the DIG’s investigative findings. And CIA refusal to comply with lawful oversight, as well as how we remedy these problems.
Intelligence community leaders and senior analysts downplayed the possibility that the COVID pandemic originated as a result of a lab incident. Motives are difficult to define given the scope of the DIG’s review. Intentional or not, the IC’s [Intelligence Community’s] actions resulted in a cover-up. Wasted resources, and a failure to properly inform policymakers. Public health policy would have been very different had the American public been made aware that a virus from a lab in China was going to serve as the foundation for an emergency use authorization mRNA products being mandated by the former administration.
The claims most ripe for origins-relevant interrogation are:
- There was a pandemic.
- There was a pandemic involving something called COVID.
- Investigations into the “possibility” this pandemic could have “originated as a result of a lab incident” were “downplayed” by members of the intelligence community (IC) and effectively constituted a “cover-up” that wasted resources and left policymakers under-informed.
- A virus from a lab in China served as the foundation for emergency use authorization for mRNA products being mandated [by the Biden administration]. If Americans knew that, public health policy would have been very different.
Related questions follow:
- What is a pandemic? Does any ‘thing,’ new or old, stable or transient, active or inert, symbiotic or parasitic, “break out” or “emerge” from previous non-existence, anywhere, at any time?
- What is COVID?
- What is a “lab incident”?
- When it is assumed or believed this lab incident took place?
- How did the lab incident result in a pandemic? What happened and on what timeline? What mechanisms are thought to be involved?
- At which lab in China did this presumed incident take place?
- What virus, specifically, in which lab in China, served as the foundation for an mRNA EUA?* The same virus implied to be involved the “lab incident”?
- What is meant by “serve as the foundation for”?
- Which EUA is being referred to (title, date)?
- How would Americans “knowing” that a virus from a lab in China served as foundation for mRNA EUA have changed public health policy? Would policies (e.g., vaccine mandates) have been more restrictive? Less restrictive?
By my read, satisfactory answers to these questions don’t appear anywhere in Erdman’s testimony, though there were plenty of moments where Senators imposed their own views.
Also notable: Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) was the only person who said “spread,” when asking about implications and prevention. (“So what have we taken away from this and how do we prevent this from happening in the future, whether it’s you know, the spread of a pandemic or you know what happened within the agency?”)
Given that something is spreading and is in need of slowing or stopping was the rationale Americans were given for officials declaring an emergency, activating plans, and exacting harmful measures, shouldn’t there be discussion about evidence of a new thing suddenly spreading, and about why the thing wasn’t killing ‘extra’ people in the U.S. until after 15 days to slow the spread was announced?
James Erdman says there was a “COVID cover-up.”
I agree.
But there was more than one. And the biggest cover-up probably isn’t something CIA senior staff will be permitted to discuss anytime soon: whether a pandemic involving a spreading novel coronavirus occurred at all.
*Erdman’s grammar here (an emergency use authorization mRNA products) is odd; he may have inadvertently omitted “for” between authorization and mRNA.
German translation of article available here.
Related: The CIA’s 25 January 2025 Statement About the ‘Origins’ of the COVID-19 Pandemic — 26 January 2025 | Follow Up: CIA Assessment of COVID-19 Pandemic Origins vs. New CIA Director John Ratcliffe — 27 January 2025 | Observations and comments about the 30 October 2025 document release involving Ralph Baric and the CIA — 19 November 2025 | Q: What did the CIA formally say about the origins of SARS-CoV-2? A: Nothing — 25 November 2025
Leave a Reply