A report released by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) alleged that the man behind the biological laboratory found in California is connected to the CCP.
The biolab contained an estimated 20 infectious disease samples, including Ebola.
The lab was discovered in 2022, when police officers in Reedley, California, noticed an out-of-place hose at a warehouse.
Authorities discovered the lab was organized by Jiabei “Jesse” Zhu, a Chinese citizen who had “previously stolen millions of dollars of intellectual property from American companies and was part of an ongoing transnational criminal enterprise with ties to the PRC for which he was ultimately charged in federal court,” according to the report.
Although officials repeatedly attempted to obtain assistance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the CDC “refused to speak with them and, on a number of occasions, it was reported by local officials that the CDC hung up on them mid-conversation.”
The agency took action only after California Representative Jim Costa (D) placed pressure on the situation.
After investigating the biological substances and vials, however, the CDC “did not test these samples to assess whether the listed labels were correct or otherwise in a cipher that the workers used for a more dangerous pathogen. It likewise did not test any of the apparent pathogen samples that were labeled in a code (i.e., a combination of partial Mandarin symbols or English letters with numbers) despite the fact that neither the CDC nor local officials ever found a key to decipher the code.”
Because the CDC did not test the vials, local officials were “unable to assess the danger to the City of Reedley community or inform the community about what steps, if any, it should take to protect public safety.”
“Local officials informed the CDC about their concerns,” the report notes. “The CDC continued to refuse to test any sample.”
The report concluded by saying, “At a minimum, the Reedley Biolab shows the profound threat that unlicensed and unknown biolabs pose to our country. At worst, this investigation revealed significant gaps in our nation’s defenses and pathogen-related regulations that present a grave national security risk that could be exploited in the future.”
