The ABC political thriller Scandal ran for six seasons. If it were a reality show, The Real Scandals of Rocky Mountain Laboratories might be getting renewed for a ninth season.

Sen. Tim Sheehy, R-Montana, urged Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General March Bell to immediately investigate "safety, security, and personnel practices at RML," a BSL-4 facility on the west side of Montana near the Idaho border that conducts federal research on the most dangerous pathogens in the world, including newly resurgent Ebola.

He cited a whistleblower complaint alleging employee misconduct and the National Institutes of Health's acknowledgment of "theft, loss, or release of a pathogen" twice in the past year at RML, part of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warning that "even small lapses could put Montana communities at risk."

"We don’t want Montana to be the next Wuhan," Sheehy wrote on X this week, referring to the suspected geographic origin in China of COVID-19. The IG's office didn't answer a query for its response to Sheehy.

Sheehy's interest was piqued two weeks ago by President Trump whisperer Laura Loomer's interview with Justin Goodman of the anti-animal testing White Coat Waste Project about an "NIH cover up involving biological sabotage and Ebola infected monkeys in Montana," as alleged by an anonymous tell-all received by WCW.

"This is very scary, and we need to find out what happened," Florida GOP Sen. Rick Scott, a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee member, said the same day. 

While Goodman told Just the News his group didn't know the whistleblower's identity, an HHS official confirmed Loomer's claim that Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "personally confirmed to me the legitimacy" of the whistleblower's allegations and that Kennedy had already referred Virus Ecology Section Chief Vincent Munster to the FBI for prosecution.

Former Senate pharmaceutical corruption investigator Paul Thacker reported May 5 that he had obtained emails "circulating" within HHS about Munster and Claude Kwe Yinda, a scientist in his lab, whose contacts are no longer in the NIH directory. Both were authors on an April paper in The Lancet Infectious Diseases on monkeypox circulating outside Africa.

They were placed on leave after an "airport security inspection" of their luggage found "pathogen samples collected from patients" during their trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo, including monkeypox, without the paperwork to legally transport it, Thacker said, while cautioning the pathogens "may have been inactivated by reagents."

The FBI declined to comment when Thacker inquired about the investigation, he said.

The whistleblower alleged Munster and his trip team were "allowed to come and go as they pleased" upon their return to RML. "The NIH powers did not inform the RML campus and went into full cover-up mode," the letter says, blaming NIH headquarters in Bethesda, Md.

When it confirmed the RML incidents, NIH didn't mention one involved a lab-infected monkey biting an employee, which prompted the whistleblower to mail the letter to WCW, senior vice president Goodman previously told Just the News. 

"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," Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., previously told Just The News, referring to the ex-NIAID director of four decades, now a Georgetown University distinguished professor.

Wuhan on the Rockies

RML has long drawn concern for both the nature of its research and safety protocols, especially its potential role in the release of SARS-CoV-2 as a "partner" in the Wuhan Institute of Virology's 2018 DEFUSE project to create a chimeric coronavirus.

Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul, who chairs the Senate's homeland security committee, flagged Munster's involvement in DEFUSE in his 2024 probe and said it "appears to contradict" Fauci's testimony that NIH didn't know about DEFUSE.

WCW noted it "worked with Congress to try to cut Munster’s salary to $1" in 2023, and has been "trying to defund his animal labs" since then with public awareness campaigns, such as billboards targeting Munster's tests on bats and primates. 

Also under Fauci's supervision, RML obtained bats from a low-rated zoo near the Camp David presidential retreat to infect with a coronavirus from WIV and collaborated on an NIH-funded bat lab with Colorado State University, whose own biosafety committee found more than 60 lab accidents from 2020 to 2023.

Another DEFUSE participant was virologist Ralph Baric, who is retiring from the University of North Carolina under a cloud. 

NIH kicked Baric off his grants and initiated debarment proceedings against him for an apparent "pattern of deception" relating to the nature of his research, alternately described and denied as gain-of-function, and who else funds it, according to a May 7 letter Baric shared with Science. He said he'll appeal the debarment, "likely with legal help from the school."

Thacker first reported Baric's removal from his grants and UNC placing him on leave. 

Six weeks after NIH told the university in April 2025 that Baric's salary "would be restricted" on his grants pending a compliance review, UNC responded that Baric was on "extended leave with no end date," according to NIH's May 7 letter. UNC put him on leave again after receiving that letter, according to Science.

'Three foreign nationals with TDS'

Sen. Sheehy's letter seeking an IG investigation of RML and the "foreign-educated" Munster refers to HHS's January acknowledgment to Just the News that an RML employee was "potentially exposed to Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever through an accidental breach of personal protective equipment" in November.

The disclosure was prompted by a cryptic notation in the minutes from an NIH Institutional Biosafety Committee meeting in November, first obtained by WCW.

RML told the Ravalli Republic in February that the employee "remained well" and has "been back at work for some time," but NIH didn't elaborate further on the incident until last week when asked about a second incident involving the highly fatal virus, as reported to the biosafety committee and disclosed in the minutes of its Feb. 19 meeting. 

The "highly experienced" worker in the Nov. 13 incident "followed all established procedures," was "immediately decontaminated, isolated and evaluated" then "transferred to the nearest Regional Emerging Special Pathogen Treatment Center," NIH told the Republic. It didn't mention a monkey bite, as the whistleblower alleged.

The Feb. 18 CCHF incident was "due to a hole in a glove that occurred while changing cages of laboratory mice," and all "reporting, emergency response, and safety protocols were followed," with "no release outside of the lab" or risk to the public, NIH said.

The whistleblower letter, posted as images by WCW, does not hide its contempt for Munster, a "Fauci acolyte and all around egotistical, arrogant, foreigner" who helped Baric "weaponize" COVID. It also identifies Munster's co-researcher, a "condescending, America-hating foreigner," and a "new minion," but WCW blacked out their names.

Customs agents in Detroit found "dozens of vials in [Munster's] baggage" upon the trio's return Jan. 25, the letter says. Munster told them it was "science stuff" and "reagents" but he later told RML "biosurety" staff they were "DNA samples," according to the whistleblower.

NIH's explanation of the equipment breach "is likely a diversion (dumbed down and misleading although true) for the fact that three foreign nationals with TDS [Trump Derangement Syndrome] who hate America and worked to weaponize the Covid virus got caught trying to sneak VHF [viral hemorrhagic fever] samples into the United States from Africa," the letter also states.

The letter identifies specific NIH and RML officials who are in "full coverup mode," but WCW blacked them out as well.