Author tells how Dick Cheney elevated Fauci to top of US biodefense research apparatus post-9/11

Fearing the development of bioweapons by U.S. enemies in the wake of 9/11, then-Vice President Dick Cheney paved the way for Dr. Anthony Fauci's little known rise in 2004 to the top of the nation's biodefense research apparatus, relates journalist Ashley Rindsberg in a new article at "UnHerd.com.

"In the aftermath of 9/11, and even slightly before 9/11, when the Bush administration came to power, Dick Cheney was especially looking to create a biodefense strategy," Rindsberg said on the John Solomon Reports podcast.

"And Cheney was very concerned about this," Rindsberg continued. "Bush was more concerned on the natural outbreak pandemic front, but Cheney was really thinking about how about the potential of enemies of the United States weaponizing biology, weaponizing viruses."

As a result of this, Cheney and Bush funded a huge infrastructure with a vertically integrated power structure and placed Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, at its pinnacle.

"This is kind of the thing that people have really missed about Fauci," Rindsberg said. "We've all come to think of him as a great public health expert — the top public health official in America. He is not that. He's definitely not that. 

"He is in fact, a biodefense national security official at the very top of that command structure. And this is something we all should have known about two, three years ago and not just today."

Fauci is the highest paid employee in the federal government, outearning senators, the president, and Supreme Court justices.

"His salary roughly doubled that of his own (nominal) boss, until recently, NIH director Francis Collins," Rindsberg wrote in an article at UnHerd.com titled "How Dick Cheney created Anthony Fauci." "Fauci's giant pay packet can be traced back to 2004, the year after NIAID was made the country's top biodefence authority agency."

It was then that Fauci became more than just another director of a public health agency.

"This salary jump was only a by-product of the radical restructuring of America's biodefence apparatus," Rindsberg wrote. "The much more significant outcome was that Fauci was essentially placed at the top of a new chain of command over which he gained nearly total decision-making ability. He went from being the director of one the NIH's constituent 27 institutes to being the only one who really mattered."

Rindsberg was also critical of the mainstream media and said one of the main problems with it is that many major outlets chose to write from a single narrative and base their writings off of the narrative. 

"A lot of this has to do with the media's allegiance and alliances with forces and elements in government," Rindsberg concluded. "They take the government message — part of the government not the whole government — and certain parties of government and drive it home at all cost, no matter what."