At least four State Department employees said in separate interviews that they repeatedly were 'warned' that an investigation into a possible COVID-19 leak from the Wuhan lab would 'open Pandora's Box;' and reveal that the U.S. funded gain-of-function research there.
It 'smelled like a cover-up,' Thomas DiNanno told Vanity Fair.
DiNanno, the former acting assistant secretary of the State Department's Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance, was one of four State Department officials who told Vanity Fair they wanted to investigate the possibility that COVID-19 spread after it escaped from the Wuhan lab.
The others were David Asher, David Feith and Miles Yu.
But they were muzzled by other State Department officials as well as the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation and even 'ostracized,' Yu told Vanity Fair.
The lab leak was touted by then-President Donald Trump and other right-wing leaders, but was deemed impossible by a 'scientific consensus' in a letter signed by 27 scientists, published on February 19, 2020 in the medical journal The Lancet.
After that, the Wuhan lab theory was considered to be at best a conspiracy - some even considered it racist - so it wasn't discussed as a realistic origin of COVID-19 until recently.
Yu, the State Department's principal China strategist, found the government's and scientists' silence 'maddening,' Vanity Fair reported.
He said, 'Anyone who dares speak out would be ostracized.'
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