Tulsi Gabbard used one of her final moves as Director of National Intelligence to declassify documents showing the United States funded 120 biological research laboratories across 30 foreign countries, a revelation that vindicates claims she and others made years ago, claims that drew accusations of treason and Russian propaganda from fellow Republicans and the press alike.
The declassified materials, which include a slide deck published by Just the News, describe labs working with what the documents call "Especially Dangerous Pathogens." Multiple facilities were located in Ukraine. Some stored pathogens dating to the Soviet era. The DNI's own press release stated that the labs "are currently or have previously engaged in research using hazardous and highly contagious pathogens, in some cases including dangerous Gain-of-Function research, with very little visibility or oversight."
That last phrase, "very little visibility or oversight", should concern every taxpayer whose money funded these operations.
The declassified materials identify bacteria and pathogens including anthrax, tuberculosis, SARS, Ebola, and the plague. The labs were described as "ostensibly for veterinary research." One facility, the Institute of Experimental and Clinical Veterinary Medicine (IECVM), had upgraded some areas with modern equipment but, as recently as 2019, maintained "at least some biosafety and biosecurity deficiencies, most notably in rooms handling contagious Brucella bacteria."
Veterinary research labs handling plague and anthrax with documented biosafety gaps. Funded by American taxpayers. In 30 countries. With minimal oversight.
Gabbard did not mince words in a video statement accompanying the release. She said politicians, health officials, and Biden administration national security figures had actively concealed the truth:
"Despite the obvious potential for catastrophic global impact research on dangerous pathogens in bio-labs can have, politicians, so-called health professionals like Dr. [Anthony] Fauci, and entities within the Biden administration's national security team lied to the American people about the existence of U.S.-funded and supported bio-labs, and threatened those who attempted to expose the truth."
That is a direct accusation of dishonesty, not speculation, but a claim backed by the very documents her office released.
The backdrop matters. In 2022, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine raised questions about U.S.-linked biological facilities in the country, Gabbard, then a former congresswoman, raised concerns publicly about whether the United States was funding dangerous pathogen research in labs abroad. The response from Washington's political and media establishment was swift and coordinated.
Mitt Romney, the former Republican presidential nominee, accused Gabbard on social media of spreading "treasonous lies" and "Russian propaganda." That post remains publicly visible on X. Romney did not merely disagree. He used the word "treasonous", a word with specific legal weight, against a fellow American raising questions about a government program that, it now appears, existed exactly as she described.
Then-White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki called the claims "false" and "preposterous," asserting that the United States "does not develop or possess such weapons anywhere." Psaki framed the entire discussion as a potential cover story "for Russia to possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, or to create a false flag operation using them."
Gabbard's departure from the intelligence director post came under personal circumstances, but the timing of this final declassification speaks for itself.
The press did not simply report the White House denials. It enforced them. The New York Times ran articles on March 10 and March 11, 2022, that downplayed the idea of U.S.-funded biological labs in Ukraine. A subsequent Times piece called the accusations "outlandish" and grouped them with "conspiracy theories that linger online."
NPR published a story headlined "How the false Russian biolab story came to circulate among the U.S. far right," singling out then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson for allegedly making false claims. NewsGuard, which S1 describes as a left-wing fact-checking business entity, labeled the story "Russian disinformation" and accused Chinese state-run news organizations of spreading it.
The pattern is by now familiar. An inconvenient claim surfaces. Officials deny it. Legacy media amplifies the denial. Fact-checkers brand anyone who persists as a conspiracy theorist or a foreign agent. And then, months or years later, the claim turns out to be true, or at minimum, far more grounded than the establishment ever admitted.
This is the same pattern that played out with the Hunter Biden laptop story, where intelligence community figures signed a letter characterizing authentic material as a Russian disinformation operation. The playbook does not change because it keeps working, until someone with the authority to declassify the receipts actually does it.
Dr. Robert Malone, described as one of the pioneers of the mRNA vaccine, noted the vindication bluntly:
"In March [2022], I wrote about the Ukraine biolabs, I was labeled as spreading misinformation by various news sources. Today, Tulsi Gabbard released the hard evidence that I had uncovered in 2022, there were many, many biolabs in Ukraine."
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, Republican of Florida, called it "a historic declassification by DNI Gabbard" and added: "Another 'conspiracy theory' proved true."
Meanwhile, Dr. Robert Pope, former director of the Pentagon's Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, had previously stated that none of the biological labs in Ukraine had "any of the sort of infrastructure for researching or producing biological weapons." That claim may be technically defensible on a narrow reading, the declassified documents describe pathogen research and gain-of-function work, not necessarily weapons production. But the distinction matters less than the broader deception. The public was told the labs did not exist, that the entire premise was Russian propaganda. The declassified evidence says otherwise.
The White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department all denied claims about the labs, as reported in the New York Times coverage at the time. Psaki's specific denial, that the U.S. "does not develop or possess such weapons anywhere", carefully avoided the question of whether the U.S. was funding dangerous pathogen research in foreign labs with inadequate safety protocols. That is the kind of lawyerly evasion that erodes public trust in institutions that claim to speak plainly.
Gabbard's push for transparency was not limited to bio-labs. During her tenure, she also sought to declassify a secret FISA court opinion exposing surveillance compliance failures, part of a broader effort to pull back the curtain on intelligence community operations that had operated with minimal public accountability.
The declassified documents raise questions that remain unanswered. Which of the 30 countries hosted these labs? Which specific facilities engaged in gain-of-function research? What oversight mechanisms, if any, were in place? Who authorized the funding, and who reviewed the safety protocols, or failed to?
None of these questions have been publicly addressed by the officials who spent 2022 calling the story a lie.
Romney has not retracted his accusation of treason. Psaki, now a cable news host, has not revisited her "preposterous" dismissal. The New York Times has not corrected its framing. NewsGuard, which faced a Federal Trade Commission civil investigative demand before the case was withdrawn on April 17, has not acknowledged that the story it branded as Russian disinformation was rooted in fact.
The broader context makes the silence worse. The Wuhan Institute of Virology was researching coronaviruses and receiving U.S. funding at the exact time and place where the COVID pandemic began. That connection drew the same treatment, dismissed as conspiracy, later acknowledged as plausible. The personnel changes across the Trump administration have brought different people into positions of authority, but the underlying institutional habits, classify, deny, smear the questioners, remain deeply embedded.
The bio-labs existed. They handled some of the most dangerous pathogens known to science. They operated with deficient safety measures. They were funded by American tax dollars. And anyone who said so in 2022 was called a traitor or a Russian asset.
Gabbard navigated difficult national security disputes throughout her tenure. But this final act of declassification may prove to be her most consequential. It does not just confirm a set of facts. It exposes a system in which elected officials, executive branch spokespeople, intelligence veterans, and major newsrooms all aligned, whether by coordination or by instinct, to suppress a true story and punish the people who told it.
When the government lies and the press covers for it, the people who got it right deserve more than a quiet vindication buried on a Friday news dump. And the people who got it wrong, who threw around words like "treason" and "disinformation", owe the public something they have shown no interest in providing: an honest accounting.