NIH Email Reveals Plan to Fool Congress With Response “That Doesn’t Actually Answer the Questions”

Francis Collins: “Sounds like a good plan.”

4 minute read

The National Institutes of Health is a rogue agency. Since the pandemic’s beginning, the NIH has put up roadblocks to Freedom of Information Act requests, forcing people to sue the agency until they disclose documents, which they then heavily redact. Meanwhile House investigators have accused the agency of withholding documents and are threatening NIH with a subpoena.

Revelations continued unfolding yesterday when reporter Jimmy Tobias released a tranche of NIH emails he got from a public records request. Buried on page 189, I found the NIH’s liaison with Congress explaining to her NIH superiors how they would avoid answering questions sent to them in a letter from the chairs of several House committees.

“We are going to draft a response to the letter that doesn’t actually answer the questions in the letter but rather presents a narrative of what happened at a high level…” wrote NIH associate director for legislative policy, Adrienne Hallett, in a July 2020 email.  “The Committee may come back for other documents but I’m hoping to run out the clock.”

“Sounds like a good plan,” responded Francis Collins, then director of the NIH.

“Thanks so much Adrienne!” replied Michael Lauer, the NIH’s deputy director of extramural research. “I’ll draft something today.”

Copied in on the exchange is Lawrence Tabak, the deputy director of the NIH.

The letter the NIH was responding to at the time was signed by the chairs of the Energy and Commerce and Science committees, as well as the chairs of their respective investigative subcommittees. In their letter, they demanded NIH answer questions about an NIH grant awarded to EcoHealth Alliance.

Senator Rand Paul has sent two referrals to the Department of Justice after catching Anthony Fauci lying under oath about funding he provided to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for dangerous gain-of-function virus research. And this May, House investigators caught Fauci’s right-hand man, David Morens, detailing in emails how he deletes communications, and both he and Fauci use private email to hide public records.

When Fauci was questioned about using private email during a later hearing, he lied and denied doing so. We know Fauci lied, because Morens emailed colleagues that KFF Health News reporter Arthur Allen had emailed Fauci on “our secret back channel.” Just two days ago, another email squirted out with Fauci telling Washington Post reporter Yasmeen Abutaleb, “I will send you an e-mail via my gmail account.”

Hallet left the NIH last year to take a job as vice president of global policy with the biotechnology company, Cambrian Bio.

“Adrienne has adeptly led NIH’s engagement with both chambers of Congress for the past eight years, during which NIH’s appropriations has grown more than 40%,” NIH Director Lawrence Tabak said in a statement announcing Hallet’s departure. “I want to thank Adrienne for her dedication to cultivating NIH’s relationship with Congress over the past several years.”

CORRECTION: A previous version listed Lawrence Tabak as the director of the NIH. Tabak served as interim director of the NIH, after Collins stepped down, and he is now the deputy director.