READOUT · 4 June 2021
Fauci readout
Provenance: Unsigned narrative readout of a meeting held Friday 4 June · drafted by or for WCPMC · 1 page, partly redacted.
A readout of the meeting at which WCPMC officers presented their COVID origins analysis, and their approach to the intelligence question, to Dr. Fauci. It records his questions, his recommendations to the IC, and his assessment of what China’s handling of the outbreak had destroyed.
Fauci was particularly interested in WIV’s pangolin work, asking for specifics on the experiments conducted on pangolin samples in the autumn of 2019, and did not appear aware of one redacted line of information.
He highlighted the importance of obtaining samples from the WIV individuals who were ill in the autumn of 2019, and wondered aloud whether the US government had ever formally made that request to China through diplomatic or public health channels.
Fauci and CIA experts agreed on the importance of establishing whether SARS-CoV-2 arose from a single or multiple viral lineages — a finding then being evaluated with CIA subject-matter experts and NCPC’s Biological Sciences Expert Group.
He suggested the IC connect with three individuals, all of whom had argued publicly that features of the virus were consistent with a natural origin.
On the Huanan Seafood Market, he said Beijing’s quick and thorough cleaning may have been a serious epidemiological misstep that destroyed key clues, and offered the view that the Chinese have shown they are better scientists than epidemiologists.
He argued it was unsurprising that no zoonotic transfer or intermediate host had been found: the search for the natural reservoir of SARS took over a decade, and for some Ebolavirus strains it still has not succeeded. An animal jump, he said, would be like searching for a needle in a haystack.
Item 7 of the ODNI COVID-19 document release of 18 June 2026, held complete and readable in the V.A.D.E.S. archive at DEFROST.WORLD.