Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released a trove of declassified records detailing U.S. taxpayer funding for more than 120 biological laboratories spread across more than 30 countries, a disclosure she says vindicates warnings that were dismissed for years as conspiracy talk and Russian propaganda.
The newly released ODNI briefing slides and intelligence assessments lay out the scope of American involvement in overseas laboratory networks, including more than 40 facilities in Ukraine that housed collections of dangerous bacteria and viruses, some dating to the Soviet era. The records name pathogens studied or stored at those sites: anthrax, tuberculosis, plague, Ebola virus, Marburg virus, MERS, and SARS.
Gabbard, who Fox News reported drew sharp criticism after Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine for raising questions about U.S.-funded biolabs there, argued the documents demonstrate the public was never given a full picture of American-backed biological research programs overseas. Critics at the time accused her of echoing Russian narratives. Supporters countered that legitimate questions about the labs' activities and oversight were being unfairly silenced.
Years later, the classified records themselves tell a story that is hard to wave away.
The ODNI slides, linked publicly as a downloadable PDF, outline what the intelligence community describes as a "web of connections" linking Ukrainian laboratories with U.S. government agencies, universities, research organizations, and private contractors. The documents identify engineering firm Black & Veatch as a major contractor involved in the work.
U.S. taxpayers spent between roughly $1.7 million and $3.5 million on individual laboratory projects, the records show. Additional documents detail U.S.-funded construction and upgrades at facilities in Kherson, Odesa, western Ukraine, and Kharkiv.
One declassified assessment zeroes in on a veterinary research laboratory in Kharkiv, the Institute of Experimental and Clinical Veterinary Medicine, that received Pentagon funding through the Defense Department's Biological Threat Reduction Program. That facility housed hundreds of samples of dangerous pathogens, including Brucella bacteria, which can cause the disease brucellosis. The assessment warned the Kharkiv lab could become a target of Russian propaganda efforts or be damaged, captured, or otherwise compromised during the war.
The documents also state that U.S. funding supported research on bird flu and other highly infectious viruses in high-security laboratories. Ukrainian scientists received U.S.-funded training to work with hazardous pathogens and participated in a program focused on handling especially dangerous diseases.
The declassification came as one of Gabbard's final acts before her scheduled departure from ODNI. The New York Post reported she is set to leave the post on June 19 after announcing she would step down to help her husband during treatment for a rare form of bone cancer.
Gabbard did not hold back about what the records mean for the officials who denied the labs' significance.
"Despite the obvious potential for catastrophic global impact research on dangerous pathogens in biolabs can have, politicians, so-called health professionals like Dr. 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 biolabs, and threatened those who attempted to expose the truth."
She added, as the New York Post reported, that ODNI would continue working with government partners to identify where these labs are, what pathogens they contain, and to end dangerous gain-of-function research that threatens public health worldwide.
The ODNI itself noted that some labs had worked with hazardous pathogens and, in some cases, engaged in dangerous gain-of-function research with limited visibility or oversight. That admission alone raises serious questions about how much congressional leadership and the public were told, and when.
The political backdrop makes this disclosure more than a routine document dump. In 2022, when Gabbard first raised alarms about U.S.-funded biolabs in Ukraine, the response from Washington's political class was swift and hostile. Just the News reported that Sen. Mitt Romney and multiple media outlets accused Gabbard of spreading Russian propaganda. The message from the establishment was clear: shut up, or be labeled a Kremlin asset.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., responded to the declassification with pointed satisfaction. "This is a historic declassification by DNI Gabbard. Ty! Another 'conspiracy theory' proved true," Luna said.
The pattern is by now familiar. Officials and media gatekeepers label inconvenient questions as disinformation. Anyone who persists gets smeared. Then the facts surface, quietly, years later, and the people who did the smearing face no consequences. The Hunter Biden laptop saga followed the same arc. So did early questions about COVID-19's origins. The playbook works until someone with enough authority decides to open the filing cabinet.
That dynamic, the reflexive weaponization of the "misinformation" label to protect institutional interests, is arguably the bigger story here than any single lab in Kharkiv or Odesa. The government's broader pattern of belated declassification across national security topics only reinforces the public's suspicion that transparency arrives on Washington's schedule, not the taxpayer's.
Not everyone accepts Gabbard's framing. Newsmax reported that the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington pushed back, describing the cooperation as aimed "exclusively at strengthening the capabilities of the public health system, epidemiological surveillance, laboratory diagnostics, biosafety, and biosecurity." The embassy called the work "ordinary civilian activities" unrelated to military objectives.
That characterization may be accurate for some of the programs. But it does not answer the harder questions. If the work was ordinary and civilian, why was it classified? Why did Biden administration officials deny or minimize the existence of these labs when asked directly? And why were the ODNI's own slides describing biosafety deficiencies and dangerous pathogen collections kept from public view until now?
The declassified assessment itself flagged risks at the Kharkiv veterinary lab, hundreds of pathogen samples, wartime vulnerability, potential for compromise. These are not the hallmarks of a tidy public-health partnership. They are the hallmarks of a program that outgrew its oversight.
Gabbard has argued her efforts align with a Trump executive order aimed at ending dangerous research. The specifics of that order are not detailed in the released materials, but the direction is clear: rein in taxpayer-funded pathogen work abroad that operates with limited congressional visibility.
More than 120 labs. More than 30 countries. Anthrax, Ebola, plague, SARS, gain-of-function research, all funded by American taxpayers, much of it conducted with what the intelligence community itself describes as limited oversight. And for years, anyone who asked about it was told to sit down.
The dollar figures are significant but not staggering in the context of federal spending, $1.7 million to $3.5 million per project. The real cost was measured in trust. Every time an official dismissed a legitimate question as "misinformation," the credibility of American institutions took another hit. Every time a senator accused a colleague of parroting enemy propaganda for asking where taxpayer money went, the public's faith in honest government eroded a little more.
The documents are out now. The pathogens are named. The contractors are identified. The funding is on the record. What remains missing is any accountability for the officials who told the American people none of this existed, and attacked those who said otherwise.
Washington has a word for people who ask uncomfortable questions too early. It calls them conspiracy theorists. Then it quietly proves them right and moves on. The public should not let it move on this time.
