To: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)
FULL REQUESTS:
Re: Records Regarding Funding for EcoHealth Alliance
SUMMARY
Empower Oversight has submitted FOIA requests to three agencies, two of which have funded EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit run by Peter Daszak. Beginning last year, numerous media outlets began reporting on financial ties between Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). Specifically, according to reports, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded EcoHealth Alliance work that, among other things, included risky virus “gain-of-function” research at the WIV.
On September 23, 2021, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to include an amendment prohibiting federal funding to EcoHealth Alliance in the Fiscal Year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 4350). But, the amendment will only preclude future—not existing—funding, and then only from Department of Defense components.
In addition to NIH funding, EcoHealth Alliance announced that it was awarded a grant in the USAID’s Emerging Pandemic Threats Program, called PREDICT, in 2014. Further, a federal database shows that DTRA has funded millions of dollars in EcoHealth Alliance research, and a whistleblower leaked a proposal that Daszak submitted to DARPA.
To better understand what type of research federal agencies are funding and whether any of that money is being sent to the WIV and gain-of-function research, Empower Oversight also submitted FOIAs for copies of 1) documents relating to EcoHealth Alliance research proposals, and 2) logs and other records relating to the processing and status of other FOIA requests.
More than 700,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, and yet questions remain about the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, the WIV, and gain-of-function research. Empower Oversight has published a crowdsourced investigative timeline on the origins of COVID-19 and is seeking additional documents and information related to that work.
If you have first-hand information you’d like to disclose to assist Empower Oversight with these inquiries, please contact us confidentially here.