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WASHINGTON — The FBI instructed US Customs and Border Protection to “not stop” the president of Manhattan nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance — which was later accused of creating the “blueprint” for COVID-19 — upon his return to the US from China in February 2021, according to explosive emails released Monday.
The messages, which were published by Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rand Paul (R-Ky.), show that CBP saw Dr. Peter Daszak as “an extremely high person of interest” due to his 15 years of collaborative research with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“Daszak was responsible for funding WIV with NIH [National Institutes of Health] grant money for research,” stated a Jan. 11, 2021, email from an unidentified CBP agricultural specialist, who noted Daszak being part of an investigative team examining the pandemic’s origins raised a potential “conflict of interest.”
“Much of the funding DASZAK receives is put towards gain of function research,” added a Feb. 2, 2021, email from a CBP National Targeting Security Specialist.
Daszak was scheduled to arrive at JFK Airport from Doha, Qatar, on Feb. 5, and CBP planned to sit him down for questions about his time in China, where he took part in the World Health Organization’s investigation into the outbreak that killed millions across the globe.
But a CBP Joint Terrorism Task Force Liaison noted in a Feb. 2 email: “Please be advised FBI New York requested we do not stop the subject.”
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The Tactical Terrorism Response Team (TTRT) Exam intended to press Daszak on why he was chosen for the WHO’s investigative team, as well as his contact with WIV personnel and whether he ever visited the lab or brought biological samples back.
“DASZAK was asked publicly by NIH to retrieve the original type-specimen used by WIV for genetic analysis, and return it to the United States,” read another internal CBP document justifying the agency’s interest.
“He was also asked to explain several aspects of their collaboration, including related to cell phone data. DASZAK called the requirements ‘outrageous’ and does not appear to intend to comply with them.”
The CBP emails also showed that Daszak had already visited Wuhan twice in January 2021, and CBP employees listed one of those trips as something worth asking about.
During a May 2024 House Oversight subcommittee hearing, Daszak testified that EcoHealth had not received any genomic sequences of viruses from WIV since before the pandemic began.
Daszak took millions of taxpayer dollars in federal grants for global infectious disease research meant to prevent pandemics — including more than $4 million for a NIH project titled “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.”
More than half a million dollars of that grant flowed directly to WIV, with its chief virologist Dr. Shi Zhengli including the grant on her resume and Daszak being listed as its principal investigator.
Daszak and Shi had collaborated for more than a decade on other research. The CBP records cite publications on bat, SARS-like coronaviruses that were “capable of directly infect[ing] humans” in the 2010s.
The Department of Health and Human Services banned Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance from receiving US funding for five years starting in January 2025 after failing to fully disclose research results.
HHS also barred WIV from receiving US funding until 2033.
An NIH official testified to Congress in 2024 that some of the EcoHealth-funded research at WIV involved gain-of-function experiments that could have made the viruses more infectious — but denied that it started the pandemic.
But other public health officials, lawmakers and scientists have indicated another proposal — submitted by EcoHealth but never funded — could have served as a “blueprint” for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
In the proposal, known Project DEFUSE, Daszak wrote that he would “downplay” the involvement of the Wuhan lab when asking for federal funding, according to drafts published by US Right To Know.
Daszak sued EcoHealth for firing him and ordering him to dismiss all employees last year. He’s since joined Nature Health Global, another pandemic-prevention health group based in Rockland County.
In May, a former adviser to ex-National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Anthony Fauci was indicted by federal prosecutors for seeking to conceal and destroy records critical to understanding the origins of COVID-19.
Prosecutors alleged that the adviser, David Morens, collaborated with two unindicted co-conspirators — revealed in emails previously produced by the House subcommittee as Daszak and Dr. Gerald Keusch, an associate director of Boston University’s National Emerging Infectious Disease Laboratory Institute.
Morens has denied all wrongdoing.
In releasing the documents on Monday, Paul announced that he would be publishing other records as part of a COVID-era “Reading Room” so the American public can “see the record for themselves.”
“For years, Americans were told a lab origin wasn’t just unlikely — it was dismissed outright by the very people funding and reviewing this research,” the Kentucky Republican said.
Reps Nature Health Global did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
