Top NIH virologist & gain-of-function advocate charged with smuggling pathogens into U.S.

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Top NIH virologist and gain-of-function advocate, Vincent Munster, has been charged with allegedly smuggling undeclared pathogen samples into America from Africa.

For years, animal testing watchdog White Coat Waste has documented how Munster’s reckless, cruel experiments on primates and bats waste millions in taxpayer dollars while posing serious biosafety and national security risks.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan announced that Munster, 53, a Dutch citizen and Chief of the Virus Ecology Section at NIH’s Rocky Mountain Laboratories (RML) in Hamilton, Montana, and his colleague Claude Kwe, 38, a Cameroonian research fellow in Munster’s lab, were charged in a criminal complaint with conspiracy to smuggle monkeypox into the United States and making false statements to federal law enforcement.

According to the Justice Department complaint, Munster and Kwe flew into Detroit Metropolitan Airport’s McNamara Terminal on January 25 after traveling from Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, where a monkeypox outbreak was actively underway.

Customs and Border Protection officers noticed the pair carrying a large black plastic case. When questioned, both men falsely claimed it contained only “diagnostics and testing equipment.”

According to the DOJ, “subsequent investigation by CBP and FBI agents revealed that the case actually contained 113 vials in Styrofoam coolers. As of the date of the complaint, the FBI has tested 20 of the 113 vials. Seventeen of them contained deactivated monkeypox virus, one contained the Chickenpox virus, and two contained only human DNA.”

The press release added, “the work of both men is focused on ’emerging viral pathogens’ and how those pathogens ‘cross the species barrier.’ They work at a Biosafety Level 4 laboratory, which employs the highest level of biosafety precautions for scientific research of known and potential human pathogens.”

In a statement, U.S. Attorney Jerome F. Gorgon Jr. did not mince words: “These NIH experts apparently broke our laws by smuggling viral pathogens on a packed commercial airplane from an outbreak in the Republic of Congo. Let that sink in.”

FBI Detroit Special Agent in Charge Jennifer Runyan added, “No researchers should believe their positions, credentials, or professional status place them above the law… The allegations in this case are serious. They involve the dangerous and unlawful smuggling of deactivated Mpox virus into the United States and alleged efforts to mislead our federal agents.”

This is the exact smuggling incident White Coat Waste exposed weeks ago, as The Gateway Pundit previously reported.

In May, we reported that the FBI had launched a criminal probe into Munster for attempting to bring back dozens of undeclared viral hemorrhagic fever samples, including monkeypox, from Africa without proper permits.

At the time, an NIH whistleblower told White Coat Waste Project that senior officials in Bethesda were in “full cover-up mode” to protect Munster. Both scientists were placed on administrative leave, their HHS directory profiles scrubbed, and the agency referred all questions to the FBI.

The same whistleblower alleged that a separate lab accident at RML, first exposed by White Coat Waste in January, involved a staffer being bitten by a macaque monkey infected with Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF), a deadly foreign virus.

The monkey was being subjected to NIH’s notorious “maximum-pain” experiments with no pain mitigation whatsoever.

The bite reportedly penetrated the worker’s protective suit.

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