Oct 9, 2022 #TheGrayzone Jeffrey Sachs joins The Grayzone's Max Blumenthal and Aaron Maté to discuss the investigation into the origins of Covid-19. As chair of the Lancet COVID-19 commission, Sachs alleges that SARS-CoV2 originated from dangerous gain of function experiments sponsored and conducted by US biotech institutions. He alleges a vast cover-up of Covid origins, including by former members of his commission, and details the personal attacks he has incurred for speaking out. Guest: Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and chair of the Lancet COVID-19 commission. .
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Transcript
the chair of lancet's covid-19
commission and recently in Spain you
commented that you believed that
the that covid-19 or SARS Kobe 2
originated due to blunders of U.S
biotech I wonder if you could expand on
that and discuss the role of the Eco
Health Alliance which was a channel for
usaid and Pentagon DARPA funding to the
Wuhan Institutes of virology which
remains a key culprit in the origins of
covid
yep basically the virus SARS Cove too
that causes covid-19 disease
is a cervical virus a bat virus that is
also called a sars-like virus because
it's uh the same sub genus as the virus
that caused the SARS outbreak in
2003-2004.
but there's a piece of the Genome of
this virus that makes it really
infectious and that is called the
cleavage site that sits on the spike
protein that we all learned about and
that allows the spike protein to be
cleaved or divided and thereby enter
human cells much more easily SARS does
not have this kind of cleavage site SARS
Cove 2 is the only virus of this bat
family cervical virus family or
sars-like virus family that has a
proteolytic cleavage site and the
specific cleavage site is called the
furin cleavage site and it's four amino
acids that make this thing so infectious
that it became a global disaster with 18
million deaths
the operative question is where did that
come from given that it is the only uh
if you're in cleavage site in this
family or sub-genus of viruses well
they didn't tell us at NIH but we found
out through leaks and lawsuits and all
the rest and by uh because insiders knew
about this that one of the uh
projects of NIH funding
was to insert urine cleavage sites into
sars-like viruses they thought that was
a good idea to make construct viruses
that would be more dangerous why not
sure but uh one possible reason is for
making vaccines against
dangerous SARS like viruses or uh
potential use of this class of virus as
a bio Warfare we don't know we just
don't know but what we do know
is that there was dangerous research
underway
and we also know that when this virus
first showed up in Wuhan and people said
whoa what is this and the virologist
looked at this in the NIH group National
Institutes of Health Group out of
fauci's shop
they said whoa look at that if you're in
cleavage site what is that doing there
and how did that get there and on
February 1st 2020 there was a secret
call it's not secret anymore because of
Freedom of Information Act but there was
a call where a group of virologists said
whoa
80 20 just came out of a lab another one
said I can't even think of how nature
could have done this one another said 50
50. now
four days later
NIH oversees a draft paper that says
definitely natural
and I call that definitely weird
and people should go to the website of
the US right to know which has done a
terrific job in these lawsuits and Emily
Kopp a fantastic investigative reporter
has laid out this remarkable week where
inside they say natural and a few days
later they I'm sorry inside they say lab
and a few days later they say natural
not that they learned anything over
those three days but they decided to
tell us a narrative
this is how government works it creates
stories
it doesn't search for the truth that
doesn't aim for the truth that doesn't
tell the truth it creates stories and
for weird understandable reasons that
Noam Chomsky and others have talked
about for decades the big media go along
with these stories
but they're very dangerous because these
are stories this is not real
investigation or or reality
so let me say clearly we don't know
exactly where this virus came from but
whoa there is a lot of weird stuff and a
lot of bad behavior by NIH and very
interestingly the head of the Centers
for Disease Control in 2020 Bob Redfield
said inside
hey this really could have come out of a
Lab
and what did fauci do he cut him out of
all the process and so he played the
bureaucratic heavy and out came a
narrative and the head of CDC with a lot
of expertise in this area was completely
shut out because he said you know
there's another side to this story we
need to look at it so what the Lancet
commission concluded because we don't
have the lab notebooks we don't have the
lab records
but what we can see is there is a
pathway by which this could have come
out of the laboratory for sure
there's absolutely no
nothing even remotely close to
definitive that it came out of the
marketplace that's been much talked
about there's so many holes and flaws
and gaps in that story that it it's
nothing close to being definitive and
perhaps is just a place where sick
people went and sneezed on on cages and
because of what's called ascertainment
bias that's where they looked in the in
the beginning because they thought maybe
they thought or they decided that maybe
it came from the marketplace but the
point is we have two viable
hypotheses and we need to know and one
of the reasons we don't know about the
lab is that the U.S government fauci
shop has not told us the truth about
what they were doing what the risks are
what they thought and how this group
made these early decisions and because
we don't know we also don't know what
else is going on what other research is
still going on what other dangerous
stuff is going on
probably I don't know I shouldn't say
probably I don't know but what I do know
is nobody knows uh except the inside of
the inside and that is not a that's not
a safe situation for this world
well presumably Anthony fauci knows
um we know uh that after 9 11 his uh
National Institute for allergic and
infectious diseases nyad received
billions
from or under the watch of none other
than Dick Cheney to conduct what we're
seen as biodefense programs but would
you have just acknowledged could also be
bio Warfare programs
um yeah and but either way what is what
is not evident to a lot of people is
that fauci's shop is the biodefense shop
of the US government it's it's where the
defense dollars go
and
you know maybe
make this virus but they don't want us
to know what's going on and that's let's
drill this down um in April 2020
promoted a nature magazine article which
claimed that covid originated from
nature and through foyer requests the
public learned that fauci was involved
in at least corresponding and
collaborating with the virologists who
put together that article uh he he
probably was involved in the creation of
that article itself and this was a
cheneyesque act it was like Cheney
trying to sell the Iraq War so the
question here is uh what what role do
you think not fauci played not only in
the cover-up but possibly in the origins
of covid-19 and to what extent can he be
held accountable
first of all that article is an awful
article it's it's called the proximal
origins of SARS Cove II it appeared in
nature medicine in uh March 2020 uh and
when I read it the first time I said oh
okay this is natural you know they
explain it and when I went back after I
you know began to get what was going on
because I didn't get it at the beginning
the most remarkable thing in that paper
it it just makes your eyes bulge
in the moment they say it couldn't have
come out of a lab because after all this
is this new virus is unlike any
previously reported virus is is the line
in there then the footnote to that which
is footnote 20 is to a 2014 paper
what a joke they're talking about an
outbreak in 2020 and they say it
couldn't have been from the lab and they
cite a 2014 Authority for that most
crucial claim and if this were in the
least an honest paper the scientists
would have said we don't know because we
haven't seen the lab books we don't know
what the research was but this is not an
honest paper
it was a designed narrative now what
really happened we don't know except
that there was a lot of dangerous
research funded by the U.S government
including niaid
and they were quite gung-ho on this gain
of function work
and the technology to make a SARS Cove 2
virus was pretty plain and we have very
clever uh bioengineers in the United
States that charted this out in a 2017
proposal to the defense department
page 10 says we have 180 previously more
than 180 previously unreported viral
strains and on page 11 it says we're
going to look for proteolytic Cleavage
sites and where they don't exist we're
going to insert them
and you say holy hell you are
thanks for telling us except they didn't
tell us that had to be leaked from
inside the US government for us to know
about that so they charted out the
handbook of how to make SARS Cove 2 and
then with the straight face they just
ignored that the whole time even till
now these same scientists that reached
the conclusion in March 2020 couldn't
have come out from a lab now they're
told well there were more than 180
previously unreported strands that comes
out do they change their mind do they
say oh we didn't know about that no
they just carry on straight face
this is not science
this is a concocted narrative what it
means I don't know but it needs an
investigation which is what I've been
calling for
and and on that investigation
um Sam husseini who's a friend of the
gray Zone veteran researcher on U.S
bioweapons helped publicize and expose
the role of the US NGO Eco Health
Alliance as a channel for usaid funding
for gain of function research and we
know that Eco Health Alliance was
helping to direct the research at the
Wuhan Institute to virology
um
dazek when you appointed him to chair
the task force you ran for Lance it was
already on the World Health Organization
commission he signed and organized the
letter dismissing the lab origin as a
conspiracy theory he obviously had a
conflict of interest because of the
funding of the Wuhan Institute
severology even though he ridiculously
denied there was a conflict there
um so I wonder if you could talk a
little bit more about the role of Eco
Health Alliance and how Peter dazak
wound up under your watch as the chair
of the task force didn't just waste a
lot of time and who who initially put
him forward to chair the task force
it's a very simple story uh in early
2020 I believed the natural uh
hypothesis because that's what the
scientists were saying and I didn't have
any reason to question that and I didn't
know about the research that was going
on and then I was asked to chair the
Lance in commission and I thought well
who's the guy that knows about zoonotic
spillovers who knows about what's going
on with the viruses so I asked dashing
no one no one put them forward there was
no
ulterior thing there was just my naivete
uh in that first six months so I asked
him to organize this thing then I
learned he's not telling me the truth
and he thinks and it
my own eyes opening up and being briefed
by a number of scientists and being
guided Jeff look at this understand this
this is how this works this is the
research that was underway you know I
had a two-year crash course in virology
that was quite wonderful with a lot of
very generous scientists helping me to
understand this but what I did know and
I know a lot about government because
I've worked with a lot of governments
over the last 40 years I knew that there
was lying going on and the more I looked
into it the more the lies and so that's
after at one point I said to Dasha
show me your project documents he said I
can't I said what do you mean you can't
you're you're on a commission that's a
transparent commission to get to the
bottom of this you show them to me I
can't my lawyers say I can't oh your
lawyers say you can't well you can't be
on the commission anymore
okay so that was the first step then the
rest of the scientists all attacked me
uh you know you're uh attacking science
and so forth then the next Freedom of
Information Act lawsuit dropped the next
piece and then I found out the one that
was attacking me the most for dismissing
dashing was a co-investigator with
dashik so I saw I wasn't getting it who
is that that's Jerry Kirsch at Boston
University uh and uh somebody I was
friends with for a long time but he went
after me and then I find out you know
he's they're all one way or another not
letting on and it's by the way it's not
a big group
it's a pretty small group but it's the
inside group they have the inside track
on NIH it's a small group that has
talked to each other since the beginning
it's a small group that was assembled to
write this stuff and it was pretty
unpleasant uh and uh
and I saw that you know this is not this
isn't about science this is about
transparency this is about finding out
what's really going on NIH you know in
the lawsuits releases redacted documents
meaning blanked out of one of them is
the 2020 review of its research on these
viruses and it's 290 blank pages and
then they want trust from us
come on if you want trust from us show
us the document not blank pages
so this is why we need an independent
investigation
let me ask a related follow-up taking
this back to Ukraine as we wrap we've
seen these allegations or rumors of U.S
biological weapons Labs that speculation
was fueled earlier this year when
Victoria Newlin was asked about it by
Marco Rubio but didn't give a direct
answer does Ukraine have chemical or
biological weapons
uh Ukraine has a
biological research facilities
which in fact we are now quite concerned
Russian troops Russian forces may be
seeking to
gain control of do you think there's any
Merit to these rumors or allegations
that the U.S has been involved in a
biological weapons program inside of
Ukraine
Merit that we need to find out
we have a system of government which in
principle if you're in seventh grade
civics or at least when I was 50 years
ago or it was more than 50 years ago we
learned that there were congressional
committees that would oversee
the behavior of the executive branch
that's what we need right now I don't
know the answer to this but I know we
need oversight and what I know for sure
is we have not had transparency on these
key issues and sad to say really since
1947 with the National Security Act and
the creation of the CIA our government
when it comes to issues like this
operates in secrecy we say that we're a
democracy but the public doesn't know
we're not told
when I was young a long time ago the New
York Times actually used to do
investigative reporting you'd be
surprised uh they they uh they didn't
believe what Johnson was saying and
Nixon was was saying about uh about
Vietnam and they were right and there
was the Pentagon papers and there was
Watergate and when I grew up it was
normal that a reporter on the New York
Times would actually look into something
now it's like a different world
and so the impunity from the mass media
is absolutely stunning that's why you
know what we're talking about and what
you're doing is so important because
we're not getting it from the sources
that are quote the uh the authoritative
sources what we're getting is the
government line
well it's Aaron and I Aaron and I grew
up in the Judith Miller era maybe yeah
there you go it's incredible it's the
opposite yeah I grew up in the Seymour
hersher yes where I love these reporters
and you know and their idea was bust
these government officials for lying to
us and they don't have that view right
now
well now we're a conspiracy theorists if
we follow inside hersh's footsteps oh I
I was attacked that way today yet again
by colleagues you know colleagues and
it's just they don't understand uh I
mean many people probably really don't
understand what this
consistent uh narrative creation lying
falsehoods misdirection really is when
it comes to all of these sensitive
issues and these issues are life and
death issues for us
well it's remarkable that more peop more
of your colleagues it just seems
remarkable to me that more of your
colleagues don't speak out more and they
did seem to be more outspoken at least
within liberal circles during the bush
era when the Iraq War started to go bad
but now it seems that they've all
adopted this mentality in favor of
endless escalation I don't know if you
can speak to that I don't know you know
I'm not uh I mean I'm I vote Democratic
but uh I I don't feel that we're
functional as a democracy and and the
last two democratic presidents launched
a lot of wars and engaged in a lot of
secret operations and I don't like it at
all and I think our foreign policy has
basically been run by the neocons for 30
years and Victoria Newland seems to be
in every Administration and so to my
mind
I don't like this partisan game well
this is on our side you know fauci's our
guy we can't attack him and so on come
on it's not these are not partisan
issues these are issues about life and
death that we need to know about and uh
a lot of people still have a kind of
partisan mentality that if the Democrats
are in don't attack you know you're be
you're part of the team but I don't feel
that this is the right approach
Jeffrey sacks director of the center for
sustainable development at Columbia
University president of the UN
sustainable development Solutions
Network and served as chair of the
Lancet covid-19 commission Jeffrey thank
you so much for your time and insight
yeah great to be with you thanks a lot
thank you thanks for what you guys are
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