Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is pushing to declassify documents related to the COVID-19 pandemic and Havana syndrome before she leaves the administration at the end of June, an ODNI official told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The clock is tight. Gabbard's departure is set for the end of the month, giving her roughly three and a half weeks to push classified material through the declassification process on two of the most politically charged intelligence questions of the past decade, the origins of the virus that killed more than a million Americans and the mysterious ailments that struck U.S. intelligence officers abroad.
An unnamed ODNI official stated:
"DNI Gabbard is actively working to declassify information about the COVID-19 pandemic and Anomalous Health Incidents before June 30."
The move comes after years of frustration among lawmakers and the public over the intelligence community's handling of both issues, frustration that sharpened considerably after a CIA whistleblower's Senate testimony last month.
Public interest in what the intelligence community knows about the source of COVID-19 has been intense since 2020. The Wuhan Institute of Virology, a high-security lab with ties to the Chinese military, sat at the center of the pandemic's origin debate from the start. Anthony Fauci's institute at the National Institutes of Health directed money to the lab for coronavirus engineering research, a fact that only deepened suspicion.
Congress unanimously passed a law in 2023 requiring declassification of intelligence related to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Avril Haines, President Joe Biden's intelligence chief, responded with a brief summary report. CIA whistleblower James Erdman III told the Senate that Haines never released thousands of pages of material he had personally reviewed.
Erdman's testimony went further. He told senators in May that some within the intelligence community had suppressed evidence of a lab accident in Wuhan, China. He also said Fauci connected the intelligence community to preferred scientists in order to advance the theory that the virus emerged naturally, a claim that, if substantiated by the documents Gabbard seeks to release, would confirm what many Americans have long suspected about how the official narrative was shaped.
Gabbard had already established herself as a DNI willing to challenge intelligence community orthodoxy. She pushed back on a clean FISA Section 702 renewal earlier in her tenure, signaling that she took civil liberties and transparency concerns seriously even when they created friction within the administration.
The second category of documents targets anomalous health incidents, the cluster of symptoms first reported in 2016 by a CIA officer stationed in Havana, Cuba. Affected officials describe a loud noise and intense pressure in the head and ears, followed by severe headaches, brain fog, blurred vision, tinnitus, and vertigo.
The intelligence community remains split on what causes it. A declassified January 2025 report showed five agencies assessing that Havana syndrome is "very unlikely" to be caused by a foreign actor. But one agency assessed it is "likely" that a foreign actor developed a novel weapon responsible for some of the symptoms. A seventh agency put the odds at roughly 50-50.
That split matters. Five-to-one sounds decisive until you consider that the dissenting agency may have access to different streams of intelligence, or may simply be reading the same evidence without the institutional incentive to minimize the problem. The affected officers, many of whom have struggled to get adequate medical care, deserve answers that aren't filtered through bureaucratic consensus.
The broader intelligence community has faced scrutiny on multiple fronts in recent months. An FBI investigation into classified leaks tied to Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats underscored the tension between transparency and the intelligence establishment's instinct to control information flow.
Gabbard's impending departure raises an obvious question: will these documents actually see daylight before she leaves? The ODNI official's statement says she is "actively working" on it, language that describes effort, not completion. The specific documents, the legal mechanism for declassification, and the timeline for public release remain unclear.
Her exit itself has already reshaped the intelligence leadership landscape. President Trump tapped Bill Pulte as acting intelligence director after Gabbard stepped aside, and lawmakers have begun discussing permanent replacements. Sen. Jim Banks floated Elise Stefanik as a possible successor.
Whoever takes the post permanently will inherit the declassification question if Gabbard cannot finish it. And there is no guarantee a successor will share her urgency. The Biden administration's handling of the 2023 congressional mandate, a brief summary report when a whistleblower says thousands of pages existed, should remind everyone how easily a declassification requirement can be met in letter while being gutted in spirit.
Step back and look at the timeline. In 2020, the public began demanding answers about what the intelligence community knew about COVID-19's origins. In 2023, Congress passed a unanimous law demanding declassification. Haines produced a summary. A whistleblower then told the Senate that far more material existed and was never released, and that the intelligence community's own analysis had been shaped by outside influence from Fauci and handpicked scientists.
Six years of delay. A unanimous law sidestepped with a summary. Thousands of pages allegedly withheld. That is the record Gabbard is trying to correct in her final weeks.
On Havana syndrome, the pattern is similar. Symptoms first appeared in 2016. A decade later, the intelligence community still cannot agree on whether a foreign adversary attacked American personnel. The affected officers, people who served their country in dangerous postings, have been left in limbo, caught between agencies that say "very unlikely" and at least one that says "likely."
Declassification alone will not settle either question. But it would let the public, Congress, and independent researchers evaluate the evidence for themselves rather than relying on intelligence community summaries that a whistleblower has called incomplete.
Gabbard's effort deserves support regardless of how one views her broader tenure. The American public funded the research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through NIH grants. American intelligence officers suffered debilitating symptoms that their own agencies still cannot explain. In both cases, the default instinct of the national security bureaucracy has been to classify, summarize, and control.
The question now is whether twenty-five days is enough time to break that pattern, or whether the documents will remain locked behind the same walls that have shielded them for years.
Americans have waited long enough to learn what their own government knows about a pandemic that reshaped their lives and an affliction that harmed the people sworn to protect them. If the intelligence community has nothing to hide, the declassification should be simple. If it isn't simple, that tells you something too.