U.S. Right to Know (USRTK) has asked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to declassify three documents about biosafety lapses occurring in laboratories that store dangerous pathogens.

The mandatory declassification review (MDR) request responds to ODNI’s decision to withhold three classified documents responsive to a Freedom of Information Act request USRTK submitted in August 2020.

The FOIA request “sought finished intelligence produced since January 2015 about the accidental or deliberate release of biological agents, containment failures in biosafety-level (BSL)-2, BSL-3 or BSL-4 research facilities, and other incidents of concern related to dual-use biosafety research in BSL-2, BSL-3 or BSL-4 research facilities in Canada, China, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Iran, Israel, the Netherlands, Russia, former countries of the Soviet Union, South Africa, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and Thailand.”

ODNI said in its response that it had located three documents, and determined these “must be withheld in their entirety pursuant to FOIA exemptions” regarding the protection of classified materials concerning intelligence methods and sources of national security relevance. ODNI did not describe or characterize the nature of the three documents or their contents, other than that they were responsive to the FOIA request.

In its MDR request, USRTK requested that ODNI release all reasonably segregable nonexempt portions of the three documents.

USRTK believes the public has a right to know what data exists about accidents, leaks and other mishaps at laboratories where pathogens of pandemic potential are stored and modified, and whether any such leaks are implicated in the origins of COVID-19, which has caused the deaths of more than 360,000 Americans.

For more information:

U.S. Right to Know is posting documents from our public records requests for our biohazards investigation. See: FOI documents on origins of SARS-CoV-2, hazards of gain-of-function research and biosafety labs.

Background page on U.S. Right to Know’s investigation into the origins of SARS-CoV-2.