Uncover DC by Michelle Edwards 7/15/2022
On July 14, 2021, Empower Oversight filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) seeking answers on why—at the request of China’s Wuhan University—the agency deleted crucial information about the SARS-CoV-2 gene sequencing in June 2020. After failing to sufficiently meet Empower Oversight’s FOIA deadline, the NIH improperly withheld information gathered in response to critical questions from Senate lawmakers seeking answers on why the agency deleted the sequencing data. Here we are now, a year later, and the NIH has made clear it has no intention of cooperating further, arguing the FOIA doesn’t require a perfect search but “only a reasonable one.”
On June 10, 2022, insisting it provided all the information it could, the NIH filed a motion for summary judgment, seeking to evade forever providing full transparency on why it deleted the data. The filing is in response to an ongoing lawsuit by Empower Oversight, which was initiated in November 2021, four months after the NIH failed to respond to its FOIA request. Since then, Empower Oversight has filed an amended complaint, challenging the improper redactions of information in answers drafted but never transmitted to Senate lawmakers Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), and Roger Marshall (R-Kan.).
On July 11, 2022, opposed to the NIH’s ongoing effort to keep secrets, Empower Oversight—a nonpartisan organization dedicated to enhancing independent oversight of government and corporate wrongdoing—filed its opposition to the summary judgment. Without question, a transparent explanation from the NIH for the deletions is crucial because the in-depth sequencing data may help understand how the pandemic began and because the deletions were made at the request of Chinese researchers. In a press release summarizing its latest action, Jason Foster, Founder and President of Empower Oversight, stated:
“The NIH has flouted deadlines and ignored its legal obligations to be transparent with Congress and the public. The agency gathered answers to the Senators’ specific factual question but did not transmit them, and then it blacked-out entire paragraphs rather than disclose the information pursuant to our FOIA request.”
More:
https://uncoverdc.com/2022/07/15/empower-oversight-nih-cant-evade-truth-on-covid-data-deletion/
