Exclusive: How a California Code Enforcement Officer in a Small California Town Blew the Lid on an Illegal Biolab Teeming with Deadly Viruses (Part 1)

By Adam Garrie and Nikos Biggs-Chiropolos, The Kennedy Beacon

In December 2022, Code Enforcement Officer Jesalyn Harper discovered an illegal biolab in an abandoned warehouse in the small agricultural community of Reedley, California. Operated by a Chinese fugitive who illegally entered the United States under a false identity, the biolab could have been the epicenter of one or more pandemic outbreaks, as its contents included pathogens ranging from Ebola and SARS-CoV-2 to HIV and gonorrhea. The poorly maintained lab was operating with impunity until Harper’s accidental discovery.

The Kennedy Beacon sat down with Officer Harper for an exclusive and extensive interview on how her discovery led her to blow the whistle on an operation involving deadly experiments conducted without any regulatory oversight. 

Close Encounters of a Pathogenic Kind 

The proximate cause of the biolab’s discovery was a series of complaints from Reedley residents who noticed a number of vehicles parked outside a warehouse in the small city’s commercial district. Others spotted people going in and out of the building, which led Harper to visit the site to see if an unauthorized business was operating in the facility. 

When Harper visited the property, her instincts as an experienced code enforcement officer were piqued by the presence of what she described as a “green garden hose that was protruding out the back of the building.” She noticed that the hose went into the building through a makeshift hole drilled into an exterior wall so that the people inside could have perpetual access to a water supply. She initially thought homeless people might be using the warehouse as a temporary shelter. 

As she explored the property, Harper made contact with the warehouse workers, from whom she gained access to the facility. Once inside, she was shocked by what she saw. “They took me to the back where this lab was, and when I walked into this room, I found approximately 36 freezers and refrigerators that were labeled with items such as human blood, HIV, COVID and various [medical] appliances,” Harper told the Beacon. “There was also a big plywood room that had been constructed, and inside were approximately 1,000 white lab mice. So, very quickly I realized something was wrong, and as I started to question them about the work they were doing.” 

Three of the people working at the biolab identified themselves as Chinese nationals while a fourth person was a Hispanic woman, according to Harper. Harper asked the workers what activities were being conducted in the biolab, and she described their answers as “deceptive.” 

Harper referred the matter to both local police and the FBI. From late December 2022 until January 2023, the FBI took over the investigation. Meanwhile, Harper and her colleagues continued to observe individuals moving items in and out of the biolab, often late at night. 

After spending less than two months investigating the matter, the FBI dropped its investigation, concluding that no “weapons of mass destruction” were on the property. Harper said that at the time agents were more focused on bombs and other traditional weapons than on biological agents or, by extrapolation, potential bioweapons. 

The Investigation Continues 

Following the FBI investigation, Harper and other local officials returned to the biolab to find two new padlocks on the doors. Local officials returned for a more substantial investigation on March 16, 2023, after they got an inspection warrant. Harper and her team discovered multiple medical test kits, later determined to be counterfeit/mislabeled. She discovered pregnancy tests that were determined to only have a 22% accuracy rate, something that, Harper explained, posed the danger of ectopic pregnancies for women relying on the false negatives provided by the tests. Prior to Harper’s discovery, many of these imported kits were sold in the US, including on Amazon with “made in the USA” labels.

Harper added, “It came to our realization that there were more than just pregnancy tests on site. We had Covid tests. We had drug tests. There were a lot more. And so the FDA was able to get involved because they did have a recall out for some of the Covid tests that were in the building that they had been looking for.”

As Harper and her colleagues moved through the facility, they found multiple vials of bodily fluids and tissues. Inspectors also saw specimens and storage devices labeled HIV, Ebola, SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19), malaria, multiple strains of herpes, tuberculosis, and many other diseases classed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as “biological agents and toxins that have the potential to pose a severe threat to public health and safety.” Most of the labels on the vials were written in Mandarin Chinese, with only a smattering in English. 

Harper also discovered that the lab mice showed signs of mistreatment. In total, the biolab housed over 1,000 live transgenic mice, rodents that are genetically engineered to carry diseases that are infectious to humans. Harper further observed filthy conditions in which many dead mice lay next to living mice that were housed in unsafe and unclean containers. 

During the March 2023 investigation, one of the lab workers confirmed to local investigators that the mice were “genetically engineered to catch and carry the COVID-19 virus.” One lab worker responsible for the mice told Harper that he and his children became ill shortly after he began working with the mice at the Reedley lab. This same worker informed Harper that he was instructed to discard dead mice that he found in the lab by throwing their remains into a dumpster. 

A Bureaucratic Brick Wall

The discovery of multiple containers and refrigerators labeled as holding dangerous pathogens led Harper to contact the CDC. However, due to bureaucratic regulations that Harper encountered throughout her investigation, she was unable to raise the issue directly with the CDC. Instead, the matter had to be first raised with California state officials who had the ability to contact the CDC. 

A November 2023 report on the Reedley biolab from the Congressional Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party noted the following: 

According to local officials, the CDC refused to speak with them [Reedley local officials] and, on a number of occasions, it was reported by local officials that the CDC hung up on them mid-conversation. Local officials were similarly unable to get any help from other federal agencies that may have concurrent authority to investigate and/or remediate the biohazardous substances found at the Reedley Biolab.

Harper told the Beacon that her experience with the CDC left her “very disillusioned.” Harper continued, “I started to really see that the higher up you go in these political levels, the more red tape there is to cut through for them to actually be able to respond to something like this. That was disheartening to me.”

Harper said that her disappointment in the CDC was only surpassed by her disillusionment with California authorities who refused to make a referral to the CDC in spite of being informed of the potential dangers posed by the lab in January 2023. Harper added, “And then, on top of it, we had the [California] Department of Toxic Substance Control that was originally handling the chemicals [found at the lab]. When it came to the chemical cleanup they walked away and said, ‘We don’t have the money to do this cleanup. The county and the city are gonna have to deal with it themselves.’”

Although both federal and state agencies kicked the matter back to Reedley City and Fresno County officials, Harper was not deterred. She said when she first entered the lab without any protective gear, she inadvertently did so at great personal risk. Harper now trains other code enforcement officers throughout California about the personal safety precautions they need to take when inspecting suspected illegal biolabs. 

A Clear and Present Danger

Harper’s fear that the biolab could have led to a major outbreak of a deadly disease is backed up by globally recognized scientists.

Biolabs are facilities that test, develop, and manipulate pathogens. These labs often work with highly contagious viruses. The NIH has four classifications of biolabs. The highest risk category is BSL-4. According to the NIH, such labs "are used to study agents that pose a high risk of life-threatening disease for which no vaccine or therapy is available. Lab personnel are required to wear full-body, air-supplied suits and to shower when exiting the facility. The labs incorporate all BSL-3 features and occupy safe, isolated zones within a larger building."

According to the 2023 Global Biolab Report, there are 51 BSL-4 biolabs worldwide, across 27 countries, including the US. However, this does not paint a complete picture. In a recent article published in Time, Dan Greene, PhD, Jassi Pannu, MD, and Allison Berke, PhD, discussed the disorganized patchwork of biolabs that dot the world, often undetected by national and international regulators. According to the authors, multiple privately owned biolabs operate with little or no government oversight. In some cases, governmental regulators are unaware of the existence of such biolabs. The authors further state that such “invisible” biolabs have a great deal of “leeway” to work with contagious pathogens capable of causing epidemic or pandemic outbreaks which can lead to death. The authors specifically name the Reedley biolab as an undetected facility experimenting with pathogens that could potentially lead to a community outbreak of a deadly disease. 

Experiments involving lab-made viruses are by no means universally accepted in the scientific community as necessary, ethical, or safe. In September 2023, an Oxford professor of molecular immunology, Anton van der Merwe, offered cautionary advice regarding an experiment conducted at the University of North Carolina, where scientists engineered a bat virus described as similar to the highly lethal MERS virus. According to van der Merwe, such experiments can cause pandemics even in seemingly safe and regulated lab environments. In an interview with the UK’s Telegraph, the professor questioned the efficacy of such experiments, saying, “There is no prospect of using such work to develop a vaccine or antiviral drug since these can only be tested in humans during an actual pandemic. It seems to me this experiment is simply not justified.”

In 2015, the CDC’s “Division of Select Agents and Toxins Inspection Report Processing Annual Summary” conceded that biological agents stored and developed in biolabs across the country pose a serious threat to human life and the environment. Despite this cautionary report, further incidents involving pathogenic leaks and contaminations from biolabs continue to pose significant dangers.

Alison Young’s 2023 book Pandora's Gamble: Lab Leaks, Pandemics, and a World at Risk, details a half century history of lab leaks and their consequences. According to Young, many such incidents have been covered up or otherwise kept from the public. 

Through experiments with deadly pathogens and multibillion-dollar “gain-of-function” programs, in which these diseases are genetically modified to become more deadly, the federal government and others throughout the world have been front and center in a global race that threatens humanity as much as, and arguably more so than, most traditional weapons. 

Young recounts a pathogenic leak from a lab doing gain-of-function research on influenza in 2019, a year before the COVID-19 outbreak. Scientists working at the lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison were engineering a strain of H5N1 avian influenza virus in order to make it potentially harmful to humans. According to Young:

In nature, the H5N1 virus has rarely infected humans. But when people have been sickened, usually through close contact with infected birds, more than half died. So it is fortunate that the H5N1 virus isn’t capable of spreading easily from person to person. If the virus were ever to evolve in ways that gave it that ability, it could cause a devastating pandemic. 

A scientist at the lab pricked his finger with a needle containing the H5N1 virus. When speaking with NIA officials, the lab’s chief scientist, Yoshihiro Kawaoka, said that the injured scientist was sent to isolate in a special “quarantine apartment.” This story turned out to be a lie, however, as he was really sent to quarantine at home where he risked spreading the virus to the public.

Young points to many incidents of similar coverups, omissions, and outright lies regarding accidental lab leaks. 

In 2020, a mouse genetically engineered to carry SARS-CoV-2 bit a lab worker at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Details of the incident went unreported in the public domain until Edward Hammond submitted a Freedom of Information (FOIA) request. Hammond, who heads the biosecurity consulting firm Prickly Research in Texas, warned that such incidents pose a grave danger to public health. As reported in CounterPunch, Hammond pointed to the fact that “the first SARS virus was a notorious source of laboratory-acquired infections.” Hammond added that experiments to engineer and manipulate viruses to increase lethality and transmissibility pose serious risks, particularly due to the often lax safety standards at biolabs where such experiments are conducted. 

Professor Martin Rees of Oxford University recently echoed Hammond’s warnings. In a foreboding statement, Rees said that safety standards at biolabs throughout the world must be urgently improved to avoid pathogenic leaks that he described as “the stuff of nightmares.” He also expressed the view that a lab leak was the likely origin of the COVID-19 pandemic. Reese added, “The real nightmare will be a deranged loner with biotech expertise, who does not care who becomes infected or how many.” 

Taken together, these past incidents make it all the more puzzling – frightening, even – that the CDC felt the potential dangers posed by the illegal lab in Reedley could be easily dismissed. After all, multiple eminent scientists have warned of the risks associated with poorly regulated legal labs and the threat of rogue scientists conducting experiments with nefarious intent.

According to a 2023 peer-reviewed study published in The Lancet, there have been 309 human infections globally as a direct result of exposures to pathogens acquired at or because of biolab activity between the years 2000 and 2021. This figure includes eight fatalities due to pathogenic exposure. Of the 309 known human infections acquired from biolabs since the turn of the millennium, 238 have occurred in the United States. This figure does not include biolab-derived infections that have not been documented or confirmed by regulatory authorities.

In early 2023, the Department of Energy concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic was most likely the result of a lab leak, as reported by The New York Times. Prior to this admission, many scientists had reached the same conclusion. Based on the shoddy standards and disease samples involved, it is therefore entirely possible that the poorly managed illegal biolab in Reedley, accidentally discovered by Code Enforcement Officer Jesalyn Harper, could have been the epicenter of a COVID-like virus – if not something far worse.

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In part 2 of our exclusive series about the Reedley biolab hiding in plain sight, we probe more deeply into why the CDC and the FBI, as well as the mainstream media, have been so disinterested in this vitally important story.