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I Went to Congress to Testify in Defense of NIH. Here's What Happened.

By dk48…kdyr July 2, 2026 · Edited July 18, 2026
On June 30, 2026, I sat at a witness table, under oath, in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, DC and testified before the House Oversight Committee’s Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets.
I Went to Congress to Testify in Defense of NIH. Here's What Happened.

Source: I Went to Congress to Testify in Defense of NIH. Here’s What Happened.
Publisher: Elizabeth Ginexi | Author: Elizabeth Ginexi
Published: July 2, 2026 | Archived: July 18, 2026

On June 30, 2026, I sat at a witness table, under oath, in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, DC and testified before the House Oversight Committee’s Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets. The hearing was titled “Mind Control and Accountability: Uncovering the Truth of the CIA’s MKULTRA Project.”

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How I Got There

MKUltra was a CIA program, and its crimes were real. Between 1953 and 1973, the CIA used hundreds of scientists to conduct at least 149 research subprojects at more than 80 institutions, dosing unwitting subjects with LSD, subjecting people to electroshock and sensory deprivation, and destroying the records when investigators came looking. It was a genuine scandal, exposed in the mid-1970s by the Church Committee, and the people harmed by it deserved a reckoning that never fully came.

What it was not, in June 2026, was urgent. The program ended more than 50 years ago. Its records were largely destroyed. There is no credible new evidence and no pending legislation. One of the experts who testified alongside me said as much from the witness table.

So why was Congress holding a hearing on it now? And why was I a witness?

The answer has less to do with the past than with the present.

The Democratic minority called me to testify under the House minority witness rule. The plan was straightforward: while Republicans staged a sham hearing on ancient CIA history, Democrats would use their witness slot to put an actual crisis in front of the committee — the dismantling of NIH happening right now, on this Congress’s watch, with this administration’s blessing. Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas was supposed to be there to anchor that counter-message and ask me questions that would let the case unfold on the record. Unfortunately, that morning when I arrived for the hearing, I learned that Ms. Crockett would not attend on account of illness. The other Democratic members were unavailable. I was on my own.

One more thing worth understanding about the structure of this hearing: it was convened as a “task force,” not a full committee proceeding. This is not a technical distinction without a difference. A House committee hearing is an official proceeding with subpoena authority. A task force is a temporary group that generally cannot compel testimony or documents. Republicans have increasingly shifted to task force hearings because Democratic members were having too much success getting subpoenas approved in full committee proceedings. Make of that what you will.

The Other Two Witnesses

I was not the only witness. The Republican majority brought in two others: Stephen Kinzer, Senior Fellow in International and Public Affairs at Brown University and author of a book on Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA official who directed MKUltra; and Tom O’Neill, an investigative journalist whose book links Charles Manson to CIA operations.

One is a researcher and the other is a journalist; both made careers writing about sensational historical crimes. But watching how their testimony was used in that room made clear that getting to the bottom of MKUltra was not the point.

To be fair, O’Neill’s written testimony made a legitimate historical case that deserved serious attention. He presented documents showing that in 1977, Congress was told MKUltra produced no usable technology — and that the CIA altered records before handing them over to conceal evidence that West had in fact achieved the program’s core objective: implanting false memories in unwitting subjects. That is a genuine, documented deception of Congress. It may warrant a serious hearing. What followed in the hearing room was not a serious hearing.

What unfolded instead was unhinged MAGA conspiracy theater designed to appeal to their base and create fake news clips to sow distrust in our government.

For example, Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee asked Kinzer whether mind control technology could have been used to program “loners” to attempt current assassinations — specifically referencing the Butler, Pennsylvania shooting targeting President Trump and the killing of Charlie Kirk. Kinzer said he hated to speculate, then speculated: he said the CIA had “developed means that we’ve never been told about many, many years ago” and imagined they had “evolved to be much more effective now.” Burchett then mused, without any evidence, that “they” could cast a broad algorithmic net knowing it would cause someone to act violently, while maintaining plausible deniability.

Rep. Lauren Boebert invoked Operation Mockingbird — a real Cold War-era CIA media infiltration program — alongside “radio waves” and “directed energy weapons,” weaving them into a single theory of ongoing government mind control. O’Neill obliged her by suggesting Mockingbird-style propaganda “is still going on today.”

Rep. Burleson asked O’Neill at length about Charles Manson as a possible CIA asset. O’Neill walked through his theory that a federal parole officer overseeing Manson was simultaneously running a drug research project and that Manson’s escalating crimes were enabled, perhaps deliberately, by federal supervision. Luna concluded the hearing by asking O’Neill directly: were Manson and Jack Ruby MKUltra victims? O’Neill said he believed Jack Ruby was, and suggested that Jolly West — a CIA-connected psychiatrist — had been placed in Ruby’s orbit to prevent him from telling his story about the Kennedy assassination.

None of this was accompanied by new evidence. Most of it was, by the witnesses’ own admission, pure speculation. But that was not the full problem.

The problem was the architecture. Every exchange followed the same pattern: a real historical crime by a federal agency was presented, a speculative extension into the present day was invited, and the conclusion left hanging in the room was that federal agencies have always been corrupt, have always lied, and cannot be trusted even today. The specific agencies varied — CIA, NIH, NIAID, USAID — but the target was the same: the legitimacy of federal institutions.

The Moment That Said Everything

In the middle of all this, something remarkable happened. O’Neill, in response to Boebert’s question about modern mind control, said this:

“Maybe radio waves and drugs are not necessary to control people’s minds. We have such a great advertising propaganda press. Social media. Collaboration that certain opinions are marginalized and real debate is frustrated because people are not given access to full amounts of information. That’s a way of controlling the minds of populations. It doesn’t even require sophisticated electronic or psychopharmacological means.”

He was right. And he appeared not to notice what he had just described.

The most effective mind control program operating in America today does not use LSD or electroshock. It uses Fox News, NewsMax, the Washington Examiner, Facebook, TikTok, etc. with a team of coordinated conservative media companies to tell people that government is corrupt, that scientists lie, that vaccines kill, and that the only trustworthy authority is the one telling you not to trust any authority. The people running this hearing know how to use it. They use this program of echo chamber mind-control disinformation every day.

What Crane and Mace did to me at that table — accusing me of covering up a pandemic, of defending an agency that killed Americans with vaccines, of being “tone deaf” to what “the public” believes — was not a search for truth. It was a performance for an audience that had already been prepared to receive it. When the room applauded Crane, it was not because he had made a compelling argument. It was because they packed the room with true believers and the preparation had worked.

Kinzer, in a different moment, described how the FBI didn’t pull the trigger on Martin Luther King but created a climate in which someone would. I found myself thinking about that observation for the rest of the day. These hearings do not need to directly dismantle NIH. They only need to build the climate in which dismantling the agency and firing civil servants feels like justice.

What Happened When They Turned to Me

I went in with one intention: say what needed to be said about the current deliberate dismantling of NIH and to not take the bait on anything else. I was not there in good faith on their terms. They were not acting in good faith on mine. I also had no backup. I was on my own. The only thing I could control was what I said and how I said it.

Chairwoman Luna cut off my opening statement before my five minutes were up. The other two witnesses were allowed to run longer.

Rep. Eli Crane of Arizona came directly at me. He reframed my testimony as “your issues with this administration’s attempt to reform and rein in the NIH.” I corrected him: “My opening statement was talking about the destruction of the NIH and cancellation of grants and political control of the NIH.”

He moved immediately to the debunked Wuhan lab leak theory, asking whether I would deny that NIH had been involved in funding it. I told him I had no knowledge of any such funding, and that I was there to talk about what is happening at NIH right now — “how we really should be letting science be driven by scientists and not by politicians. That’s how we fund cures and make health progress.”

He pushed back, telling me that “for years we were told to trust the science, and then in the aftermath, we’ve all found out that most of what we were told during COVID was a complete lie, and it wasn’t scientific at all.”

I redirected:

“The number one thing that I think that we’re doing to destroy trust in American science right now is canceling clinical trials in the middle of those clinical trials. This does incredible harm to the patients who are receiving experimental treatments, and it really destroys the trust that we have in how do we recruit patients for future trials if they are knowing that their trials could just be simply canceled for political reasons.”

He then pivoted to ask whether I thought NIH had a trust problem based on how it handled COVID.

This is their go-to talking point. Keep in mind: declines in trust for NIH have been driven largely by the GOP disinformation campaigns on Fox News about COVID. Confidence in the NIH to provide trustworthy public health information dropped to 62% in a recent Annenberg Public Policy Center survey. This is a decline from 75% in 2024. These lies are purposefully designed to sow distrust so that they can cite the drop in trust as a reason to dismantle the agency. That’s the scheme.

But they have to repeat these lies and hold sham hearings like this one because their efforts are never fully successful. Sixty two percent of Americans trust NIH, and general support for biomedical research remains strong. Recent polls by Research!America show 92% of Americans support basic scientific research. A separate survey by the American Association for Cancer Research found that 77% of voters want their lawmakers to increase funding for the NIH and its branches.

In my reply to his question about a trust problem, I told Crane:

“No, I do not. I think that the NIH is beloved by the American people because we know about the advances in human health and cancer treatments and heart disease and diabetes and all of the health gains that the research has produced.”

The polling data are on my side. But he told me I was wrong, that the public had a “serious mistrust issue” with NIH. And then he asked whether I denied that NIH tried to cover up the origins of COVID, and he also asked about covering up harmful vaccine side effects and about masking and social distancing. His tactic is to rile up the hand-picked hearing room audience with scary disinformation designed to trigger them to applaud thereby creating a magic moment ripe for a TikTok video vilifying a former NIH scientist. He has a well-funded right-wing organization called “Real America’s Voice” who creates the video and makes it go viral with hateful trolls commenting and spreading the message.

This is the playbook. It’s a mind-control media operation. Repeat the disinformation and lies and accuse scientists and government agencies of killing people. Generate suspicion and outrage based on fantastical lies. That way, when Russell Vought cancels the budgets for all of these federal agencies including the NIH, the MAGA supporters will cheer.

I stuck to my story, based in truth and facts. I told Crane that what concerns me most is what is happening right now: “We’re ceding our leadership in biomedical research to China.”

Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina followed. She asked whether I had spoken with Anthony Fauci or any NIH colleagues about NIH’s role in funding the Wuhan Institute of Virology or the development of COVID-19. No. Did I believe NIH or Dr. Fauci lied to the American people about COVID? No. Was I familiar with Dr. Fauci’s statements to Congress? No. Did I think COVID shots harm American citizens? No. Did they cause turbo cancers? No. Then: “Why did the Dems send you here?”

I told her: “I am here to testify about what is happening to the NIH right now.” And when she pressed that I was not an MKUltra expert, I pointed out that I am an expert in human subjects protection, a topic that is directly relevant to a hearing nominally about research ethics conducted on human subjects.

I did not go along with any of it. I was not going to.

What the Science Actually Says

The claims Crane and Mace made at that table were not ambiguous. They deserve direct responses.

On mRNA vaccines:

A comprehensive review published this month in The Lancet, drawing on six years of data from laboratory science, clinical trials, and real-world surveillance of billions of doses, concludes that mRNA vaccines are safe and highly effective. One analysis found 87 percent effectiveness against documented COVID infection and 94 percent effectiveness against death. Serious adverse events are exceedingly rare. The technology does not integrate into human DNA. It clears rapidly. There is no evidence that mRNA vaccines cause cancer. There is no evidence they caused excess deaths. These are not contested scientific questions. They are disinformation points that have been examined and rejected by the evidence.

On NIH and COVID origins:

I was asked repeatedly whether NIH funded research that caused a lab leak and whether I had personal knowledge of a cover-up involving Dr. Fauci. The answer to both is no. I had no involvement in that area of NIH’s work, and I have no such knowledge. But more importantly, these accusations represent wholly debunked conspiracy theories full of disinformation. The majority of virologists and epidemiologists who have examined the question conclude that the available evidence favors a natural spillover origin — a virus jumping from animals to humans, as has happened with every major pandemic in recorded history. No credible evidence links NIH-funded research to the emergence of SARS-CoV-2. The claim that NIH or anyone in government covered up anything is pure nonsense. And it is very dangerous. This rhetoric puts the lives and livelihoods of scientists like Dr. Fauci and others who study virology in peril.

These are terrifying lies that Republicans are using to manipulate people’s opinions about NIH.

What Came After

Since the hearing, I received a threatening comment accusing me of lying to Congress, claiming that a social psychologist is not a scientist, and repeating the false accusations about Fauci and Wuhan. I received other strange messages about CIA conspiracy theories, and musings linked to the “Stranger Things” and MKUltra fandom community. Bizarre stuff.

I will not be intimidated. I have truth and integrity on my side. What was deployed against me in that hearing room was not argument. It was the same theater and lies that have been deployed since 2020. It did not work at the witness table. It will not work here.

A staffer told me afterward that anyone serious knows Eli Crane is not a serious legislator, and that Rep. Crockett’s absence left me on an island. They said I did as well as anyone could have. I believe that. Getting the truth into the record, even in a hearing not designed to receive it, was still worth doing.

Why It Matters

The hearing was absurd. But what it represented is not.

Building public distrust in federal science is not incidental to the project of dismantling it. It is the precondition. If people believe NIH caused a pandemic, covered it up, and poisoned them with vaccines, then canceling NIH grants is not cruelty. It is accountability. The MKUltra history, real and genuinely disturbing, is useful for Republicans because it provides a foundation of documented government wrongdoing from which any further accusation can be launched. You don’t have to prove the new claim. You only have to make it feel plausible.

None of what Crane and Mace said about me or about NIH is true. But as O’Neill himself observed, you don’t need sophisticated technology to control what people believe. You just need a media apparatus willing to repeat the lie and an audience that has already been told not to trust anyone who contradicts it.

I went to Congress with no illusions about what I would find. I found exactly what I expected. And I said what I went there to say.

If no one stands up to the lies. The lies will win. So, I stood up for truth and science.

Right now, the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans are purposefully dismantling the NIH and all the other science agencies. Over 80 years, the US built the most productive publicly funded biomedical research enterprise in human history. The health and economic returns are documented, specific, and large. The speed of the current dismantling is breathtaking.

If you care about future cures for cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and infectious diseases, you need to speak up now before it’s gone.

The day after the hearing, the Washington Post published an op-ed by Scott Atlas, a former Trump COVID adviser and Hoover Institution fellow who was widely criticized by public health experts during that period for advising against mask mandates and supporting herd immunity strategies that would kill millions. His op-ed is titled “Abolish the NIH. It Really Would Benefit Science.” The piece invokes libertarian economist Milton Friedman, accuses NIH of fiscal abuse, ideological capture, and suppression of scientific dissent, and concludes that private philanthropy and venture capital can replace everything NIH does. It is a more polished version of what Crane and Mace were performing at the MKUltra hearing.

Atlas cites checkpoint inhibitors and semaglutide as examples of private-sector success without mentioning that both depended on decades of NIH-funded basic science those companies did not pay for and would not have funded. He argues that every administration has politicized NIH without acknowledging that the Trump administration canceling 5,100 grants worth $4.4 billion in a single year is most certainly not a point on a continuum of “both sides do it.” The MKUltra hearing was the emotional performance. The Atlas op-ed is the intellectual scaffolding. Together they are doing the same hit job. I have addressed the conservative argument against the NIH in an earlier essay which I encourage you to read. The short version: the arguments against NIH funding rest on a fundamental and deliberate misrepresentation of how science infrastructure works and what happens when you destroy it.

Here’s What YOU need to do

Comment against the OMB rule: Deadline: July 13, 2026 at 11:59 PM Eastern

https://www.regulations.gov/commenton/OMB-2026-0034-0001

Call your representatives. Email your representatives.

They can take action against this through a joint resolution that can be added to appropriations bills or stand alone. However; a joint resolution would need to pass both houses.

More resources and tools:

Stand up for Science Action page: https://fight2win.standupforscience.net/

My substack articles:

· How to write a comment on the Federal Register - https://elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/what-we-need-to-do-next-ombs-proposed

· Summary of Key Changes in OMB’s Proposed Federal Financial Assistance Rule -https://elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/summary-of-key-changes-in-ombs-proposed

· A Rule Nobody Voted On Could Cut Federal Funding to Your Community -https://elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/a-rule-nobody-voted-on-could-cut

· This new OMB Rule Is Bigger Than Science. Much Bigger. -https://elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/this-new-omb-rule-is-bigger-than

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