NIH spent five months saying nothing about an incident that now has two of its researchers facing federal charges for allegedly smuggling biological material into the United States from an active monkeypox outbreak zone.
Vincent Munster and Claude Kwe touched down at Detroit Metro Airport on Jan. 25, coming off a flight from Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, where a monkeypox outbreak was actively spreading. Customs officers pulled them aside and asked about the large black plastic case they were carrying. Munster and Kwe said it held diagnostic and testing equipment. It didn’t. Inside: 113 vials packed in Styrofoam coolers.
Munster, a Dutch national, ran the Virus Ecology Section at NIH’s Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Montana. The BSL-4 facility works with Ebola, plague, and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, among other pathogens. Kwe, a Cameroonian national, was his research fellow. Both are foreign nationals with full access to one of the most dangerous research facilities the U.S. government operates. According to federal prosecutors, both decided the rules didn’t apply to them.
The place was already under a microscope before Tuesday. Just last week, Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-MT) asked the HHS Inspector General to open a review of the facility after a lab worker got bitten by a monkey infected with Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever. Sheehy also flagged a whistleblower complaint against Munster personally, one surfaced by White Coat Waste, the conservative animal rights group. Laura Loomer had been beating the drum publicly, calling for federal intervention against the lab and against Munster directly.