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A new report made public this week revealed that two biosafety incidents occurred in the last year at a high-security National Institutes of Health (NIH) animal laboratory in Montana. One of the incidents involved a lab-infected monkey biting an employee, a detail that public health officials left out of their acknowledgment.

"Secretive monkey lab accidents and virus smuggling scandals sound like something ripped straight from Anthony Fauci's playbook, yet somehow this dangerous madness is still happening years after his disgraceful exit from government," Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., told Just The News.

The White Coat Waste Project said in the report, that it obtained records revealing that NIH’s Rocky Mountain Laboratories (RML) in Hamilton (a BSL-4 facility) reported in November 2025 that a “select agent” pathogen—a category of dangerous substances that could pose severe public health or bioterrorism risks—had been released, lost or stolen. BSL refers to the level of threat any virus presents. BSL-4 is regarded as "high risk" according to the CDC.

The following day, after the group publicized the report, NIH acknowledged that a lab worker had been exposed to Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus, though stopped short of acknowledging the nature of the exposure, according to the organization. Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus causes fever, severe bleeding, organ failure, and shock, and is often fatal.

Following the incident to which NIH admitted, an anonymous whistleblower told the group that the worker was bitten by an infected monkey during an experiment.

"The NIH did not admit the full truth about what happened, that the exposure that happened in the lab was because a monkey who was being used in painful experiments with this virus, bit a staffer," Goodman said.

The lab has faced prior scrutiny from the White Coat Waste Project, which obtained records and images through a 2022 lawsuit showing primate experiments involving Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever.

Adding further concern to these incidents, the former Chief of the Virus Ecology Unit at the RML is Vincent Munger, who is currently under criminal investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for allegedly smuggling unsecured samples of dangerous pathogens into the U.S.

Munster, who has longstanding ties to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s NIAID (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases), traveled earlier this year to the Democratic Republic of Congo—a global monkeypox hotspot—with NIH scientist Claude Kwe Yinda.

Upon return, U.S. airport security found the pair carrying patient-collected samples, including monkeypox virus (an HHS select agent posing a severe public health threat), without the required legal documentation and Department of Transportation permits. Both scientists were placed on administrative leave by the NIH and removed from the HHS staff directory.

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