A House committee report released on Wednesday stated that hundreds of vials of biological chemicals, some labeled “HIV,” and a freezer marked “Ebola” were discovered stored in an illegal Chinese-owned biolab in California.
An alert code enforcement officer called Jesalyn Harper found the risks associated with the illicit lab, which was operating in Reedley, California, in December 2022. Remarkably, the facility was operating out of a warehouse that was believed to have been abandoned for almost ten years. When Harper noticed a green pipe protruding from a hole in the warehouse’s wall, she became suspicious.
Harper discovered lab equipment, medical-grade freezers, lab mice, and bottles labeled in Mandarin, English, and an unidentified code within the lab. She also encountered a number of people who claimed to be Chinese nationals and were dressed in lab coats.
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After Harper’s finding, city officials became concerned and launched an investigation. The FBI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention first declined to look into the situation, according to the House committee report. In September, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party began an independent inquiry and produced a 42-page report.
The study emphasizes that “local officials spent months repeatedly trying to obtain assistance from the CDC.” Additionally, according to the study, “local officials reported on several occasions that the CDC hung up on them mid-conversation.” The CDC apparently declined to speak with them.
Congress’s investigators discovered that “local officials were similarly unable to get any help from other federal agencies.” The FBI “closed its investigation because the Bureau believed that there were no weapons of mass destruction on the property,” the report states that it told local officials. Subsequently, the House subcommittee determined that the labeled vials of suspected diseases discovered at the Greeley biolab are “inconsistent with the operation of a bioweapons program,” with the exception of Ebola.
Jia Bei Jesse Zhu was named as the founder and proprietor of Reedley Bio-labs.
