The Pentagon is facing new and increasing scrutiny over its inability to track U.S. taxpayer-funded research at Chinese labs as well as its efforts to withhold the information it does have on the risky pathogen-enhancing projects.
A Department of Defense Office of Inspector General (OIG) report — mandated by a provision authored by U.S. Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) in the FY 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) — was released this month with heavy redactions and a sobering admission from the Pentagon: "the full extent of DoD funds provided to Chinese research laboratories for research related to enhancement of pathogens of pandemic potential is unknown."
Now, Ernst is demanding the Pentagon do better and release, in full, what it does know about U.S. funding of such research.
In a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin obtained exclusively by Townhall, Ernst explains that the incomplete accounting of taxpayer-funded pathogen-enhancing research in Chinese labs is, unacceptably, "due to DoD not sufficiently tracking or monitoring expenditures made from its own contracts and grants."
Ernst also notes that "Navy officials didn’t even bother responding to the OIG’s specific questions." Not quite what is expected of what Biden promised would be the "most transparent administration in history."
Even the limited information the Inspector General could dig up is "inexplicably redacted in the version released to the public," despite it being "not classified or proprietary," in violation of the requirement it "be disclosed to the public by the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act," Ernst emphasizes in her letter. Transparency strike two for the Biden admin.
Why is the Pentagon paying for risky research in China and hiding it from the taxpayers footing the bill? pic.twitter.com/VQlCj7cEuo
— Joni Ernst (@SenJoniErnst) June 22, 2024
Raising more questions about the attempts to withhold information on the research, Ernst notes that a "program announcement for one of the redacted projects does appear to be listed on the department’s own public website" but the "description of the project omits any mention of China or the collaboration with a company closely affiliated with China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that may be playing a role in the regime’s genocide of ethnic minorities."
"It is deeply troubling that the government, especially DoD, cannot account for how much taxpayer money is being sent to China or why and it is hiding what it does know from the public," Ernst reiterates to Secretary Austin in her June 25 letter before pointing out her years of important work "investigating how the National Institutes of Health funded risky research in China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology and attempted to withhold the truth about what was really going on in Wuhan — which may hold vital clues to the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic — from Congress and the American people."
"The Pentagon should allow the OIG to immediately release, in full, an uncensored and unredacted version of the report," Ernst demands in her letter. "There is no reason for playing hide-and-seek with how and where the hard-earned money provided by taxpayers is being spent."
"This alarming Inspector General investigation demonstrates Washington hasn’t learned any lessons from COVID-19," Ernst told Townhall exclusively on Tuesday. "Without my calls to audit DoD spending, these dollars wasted on our adversaries would have never been unmasked."
Ernst reiterated that "taxpayers deserve an explanation as to why the Pentagon was funding a controversial biotech company in China to create drug-resistant, mutant coronaviruses in the midst of the pandemic most likely sparked by the risky research funded by the U.S. government in another lab in China."
In pursuit of the explanation taxpayers indeed deserve, Ernst's letter to Secretary Austin requests specific responses to the following questions by August 1:
1. An explanation for redacting the information in this report from the public along with the individuals, by title, who recommended the redactions;
2. An explanation as to why the expenditures identified in this report are not included in USAspending.gov, the public database of government expenditures;
3. The reasons the Navy did not cooperate with the OIG’s review by completing the questionnaire on funding to China and affiliates for pathogen research; and
4. An explanation for collaborating with a Chinese company affiliated with the PLA that poses a potential threat to U.S. national security and intellectual property.
The information Ernst has managed to pry out of the Pentagon makes it "clear" that "a much deeper investigation is warranted into all of this," the Iowa Republican told Townhall. "And I am calling for one."
Zooming out, Ernst said it's "shocking the Biden administration is hiring an army of IRS agents to audit U.S. taxpayers but can't keep track of where tax dollars are being spent overseas." Her TRACKS Act mandates that "every penny sent to China or any other country of concern be accounted for and the receipts be publicly posted," Ernst explained to Townhall. "Then we can work to ensure American taxpayers never again aid the dangerous experiments of mad scientists in China."
🚨My calls to audit government spending proved my point — Washington hasn’t learned any lessons from #COVID.
— Joni Ernst (@SenJoniErnst) June 21, 2024
We need my TRACKS Act to require every penny sent to our adversaries be accounted for.
We must stop the funding of Chinese mad scientists in its tracks! 🐾💸🧪 https://t.co/SAD35Oe09w
Despite the Biden administration's promise to restore transparency and trust in government, it quickly got to work obfuscating, withholding, and obstructing the truth. The Biden administration's lack of transparency has been especially brazen at the Department of Defense where Secretary Lloyd Austin put an exclamation point on the Pentagon's unaccountable status quo with his secret hospitalization that jeopardized the chain of command.
Given this track record, it's somewhat unsurprising, though no less shameful, that the Biden Pentagon is simultaneously unable and unwilling to be transparent about its use of taxpayer dollars for research at Chinese labs.