Declassify State Dept. COVID documents: Former CDC director

(NewsNation) — The man who headed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention when the COVID pandemic began says still-classified State Department documents add credibility to his long-held contention that the virus spread because of a leak from a laboratory.

“Once they are declassified, the American public will get a much better understanding of the knowledge base we have,” Dr. Robert Redfield told NewsNation’s “Elizabeth Vargas Reports.”

Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, chair of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, says he recently viewed the State Department’s documents, which he says strongly hint that the Chinese Communist Party attempted to cover up the fact that COVID first spread due to a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Wenstrup is asking Secretary of State Antony Blinken to declassify the report, and Redfield agrees. But he also has an idea why it’s not happening.

“Obviously there’s geopolitical reasons that they’re keeping this classified. I don’t think it’s warranted.”

On Wednesday, Wenstrup announced that his panel has issued a subpoena “to compel Dr. David Morens — a top adviser to Dr. Anthony Fauci at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases — to appear for a public hearing.”

The committee’s news release says “Dr. Morens will be asked to address new evidence suggesting he deliberately obstructed the Select Subcommittee’s investigations into the origins of COVID-19 to protect his former boss, Dr. (Anthony) Fauci.”

“I think he (Wenstrup) is gonna get to the truth,” said Redfield, who has long complained that he was “sidelined” because his lab leak theory contradicted other scientists including Fauci.

Just as it’s important to learn the true origins of COVID, Redfield says, it’s also vital that researchers minimize the danger of future lab leaks. He’s calling for an end to “gain of function” research.

“I think it puts our world at great risk,” referring to efforts to “teach” viruses how to transmit from human to human. The goal is to find ways to fight that spread before it potentially happens. But Redfield says the risk is not worth the reward.

“That’s the real biosecurity threat,” he said. “University labs are doing bio experiments that are intentionally modifying viruses … where they are teaching these viruses how to be more infectious for humans.”