Slack messages released by Sen. Rand Paul show COVID-19 origin paper authors privately doubted their own conclusions

Sen. Rand Paul has released internal Slack messages revealing that the scientists behind the most influential paper dismissing a COVID-19 lab leak privately acknowledged the theory was plausible, even as their work was used to shut down public debate.

The messages, exchanged among the four authors of "The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2," show the researchers assigning double-digit probability estimates to a lab origin months after their March 2020 paper in Nature Medicine declared the virus had not been manipulated. Kristian Andersen, one of the lead authors, privately put the odds of a lab origin at 30 percent. Co-author Eddie Holmes estimated 20 percent, later revising downward to 10 percent. Their paper, meanwhile, was being cited by public health officials and major media outlets as the definitive scientific authority for ruling out a laboratory source.

Paul, the Kentucky Republican who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, released the Slack messages as part of a broader document push that also included government records showing the FBI intervened to block U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents from questioning Peter Daszak, the British zoologist and former president of EcoHealth Alliance, upon his return from the World Health Organization's investigation into COVID-19 origins.

Andersen admitted "less confidence" in his own paper's strongest claim

The most damaging excerpt comes from a June 11, 2020, message in which Andersen addressed the gap between what the paper said publicly and what the authors believed privately. He told his co-authors:

"The part I'm really struggling with is that, at the end of the day, we really don't have any hard evidence one way or the other, and especially given some of the recent evidence, we also can't rule out that somebody actually put it in there."

Andersen continued: "That's obviously not to say that somebody did, but we can't rule it out. Our paper was pretty strong in saying 'there's no way,' but I have less confidence in that statement at this stage."

Andersen also flagged the furin cleavage site, a feature of the virus that some researchers have argued is more consistent with laboratory engineering than natural evolution, as among "some smoking(ish) guns" that made him "not comfortable." The messages further revealed that the authors coordinated with U.S. intelligence community officials and NIH leadership while publicly defending their conclusions.

That coordination is central to the scandal. The paper was not simply a mistake or an honest disagreement among scientists. The Slack messages show the authors knew their public certainty outstripped their private assessment, and they maintained that certainty anyway, in coordination with the very government officials who had the most to lose if a lab leak were confirmed.

Co-author Rambaut called natural-origin framing the "politically expedient course"

The private doubts went beyond Andersen. Co-author Andrew Rambaut was blunt about the political calculation driving the paper's conclusions. In one Slack exchange, Rambaut wrote:

"Given the s*** show that would happen if anyone seriously accused the Chinese of even accidental release, my feeling is we should say...we are content with ascribing it to natural processes."

Rambaut called this the most "politically expedient course." That is a remarkable admission. A paper presented to the world as settled science was shaped, at least in part, by a desire to avoid diplomatic fallout with China, not by the weight of the evidence.

Andersen echoed the tension in another message: "Although I hate when politics is injected into science, but it's impossible not to, especially given the circumstances." The circumstances, of course, included a global pandemic, an ongoing presidential election year, and intense pressure from NIH leadership to maintain the natural-origin narrative.

The authors also discussed managing their paper trail. They planned to "stay off email" and "carefully curate" emails that might be subject to Freedom of Information Act requests, a detail that raises serious questions about whether they understood their publicly funded work carried transparency obligations and chose to evade them.

Previous investigations have exposed similar patterns of federal officials using private channels to avoid public records requirements. Government accountability depends on preserving official communications, a principle that applies whether the subject is encrypted messaging apps or carefully scrubbed email inboxes.

FBI blocked border agents from questioning Daszak after his WHO trip

The Slack messages were only half of Paul's document release. The day before, he published government records showing that CBP agents had been preparing to question and search Daszak when he returned to the United States from the WHO's COVID-19 origins investigation. Before agents could act, the FBI intervened and told them to stand down.

The documents do not explain who at the FBI gave the order or under what authority. Paul's office has not identified the specific officials involved. But the implication is clear: at a moment when Daszak, whose EcoHealth Alliance had funneled U.S. grant money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for coronavirus research, was returning from an investigation into whether that very lab was the source of the pandemic, the FBI stepped in to ensure he was not questioned.

Daszak's role has long been a flashpoint. EcoHealth Alliance, under his leadership, directed federal research dollars to the Wuhan lab for gain-of-function research, the type of work that manipulates viruses to make them more transmissible or dangerous. The fact that the FBI shielded him from routine border questioning adds another layer to what already looked like a coordinated effort to insulate key figures from scrutiny.

Declassified documents released earlier by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard alleged that Dr. Anthony Fauci misled Congress and steered intelligence agencies away from the lab leak theory, a pattern consistent with the broader picture emerging from Paul's releases.

Authors suspected fellow researcher Ralph Baric of leaking to the press

The Slack messages also reveal infighting among the scientists. The authors discussed Ralph Baric, a prominent coronavirus researcher, and suspected him of being an anonymous leaker they dubbed "Deep Throat", a reference to the Watergate informant. They believed Baric had shared confidential peer-review information with a journalist.

The authors acknowledged Baric's expertise but described a "highly contentious relationship" with him. The identity of the journalist and the specific information allegedly leaked remain unclear from the released documents.

The nickname itself is telling. The authors understood they were operating in a politically charged environment where leaks could upend the narrative they had constructed. Their concern was not that the science might be wrong, their own messages show they knew it might be, but that someone outside their circle might expose the gap between their public certainty and private doubt.

Critics of the federal government's pandemic response have long argued that a small circle of officials and researchers operated as an insular establishment more concerned with protecting institutional credibility than pursuing the truth. The Slack messages lend concrete support to that argument.

Fauci faces Senate subpoena as pressure builds

Paul has subpoenaed Fauci, the former face of the U.S. pandemic response, to testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on the origins of COVID-19. Fauci is slated to appear this month.

Fauci has been accused of providing inaccurate statements to Congress regarding U.S.-funded research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and of working to steer intelligence assessments away from the lab leak hypothesis. The upcoming testimony will be his first appearance before Paul's committee since the senator gained the chairmanship.

Paul framed the document releases as a necessary corrective. He told Fox News:

"The idea that it came from a lab is implausible, and, yet, privately they're saying the opposite.... This level of dishonesty, I think, needs to be exposed."

He added: "These are people who get large, multimillion-dollar grants from our country, and we shouldn't be giving money to people who lied to us."

The WHO's own scientific advisory group released a report concluding that the pandemic was caused by "zoonotic spillover," either directly from bats or through an intermediate host. But that conclusion has faced growing skepticism, particularly as more evidence of the authors' private doubts and the federal government's efforts to suppress alternative theories has come to light.

A pattern has emerged across multiple investigations: officials and federally funded researchers who publicly insisted the science was settled were privately uncertain, politically motivated, and actively working to manage the information environment. When institutions get caught saying one thing in private and another in public, the damage extends far beyond the original deception.

The American public spent years being told that questioning the natural origin of COVID-19 was misinformation. The people doing the telling, it turns out, didn't believe it either. That is not a scientific disagreement. It is a breach of public trust, funded with taxpayer money, conducted behind closed doors, and defended with the full weight of the federal government.