If you’ve been following the development of the COVID-19 ‘lab leak’ theories, you’ve probably come across content produced by the investigative advocacy group “US Right to Know” (USRTK). I had assumed they were a right-wing group, given how closely their rhetoric mirrors that of Republicans such as Rep. Brad Wenstrup of Ohio. However, this group actually emerged from the paranoid fringe of the progressive movement, so it is particularly important for us to understand where they are coming from and how they work.
From the Daily Beast (2021):
...even as the group does not advocate against vaccines, its roots run into a vitriolically anti-vaccine organization that has promoted conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11 attacks and “The Great Reset.”
That theory posits that pandemic-safety protocols are a prelude to a new global regime of government and corporate control.
Filings with the Internal Revenue Service and the state of California show that USRTK launched in 2014 on a $44,500 grant from the Organic Consumers Association (OCA). For the first two years of USRTK’s existence, the Minnesota-based OCA was its lone funder, with contributions swelling as years passed, and totaling more than $1 million in 2021, according to USRTK’s own reporting.
That article has additional information about their support for RFK Jr, their connection to snake-oil multi-millionaire Joseph Mercola via the OCA, and their role as a bridge between the paranoid fringe and mainstream journalists. Their connections with OCA and others have caused MediaBias/FactCheck rate USRTK as a “moderate pseudoscience website”.
USRTK has successfully raised money from big donors during the pandemic, going from about $400,000 annually before the pandemic to $600,000 annually during the pandemic. Ironically for a group focused on transparency, many of their large donations now come from donor-advised funds, which mask the identity of the donor. They don’t declare of how much money comes from small donations, so for all I know it’s all from large donors.
They announced their ‘lab leak’ campaign in October of 2020 — their boost of large donations followed in 2021, so perhaps there’s a link between this new project and the increased funding.
The problems with their behavior can be hard to notice. I sympathize with parts of their agenda, and am happy to see them push for greater transparency from powerful companies and government officials. However, they often turn their sights on people who are influential but not really powerful, such as scientists; they then commence harassment/smear campaigns based on a barrage of FOI requests and public misrepresentation of words exchanged among colleagues. USRTK reporters don’t lie or invent absurd fantasies (that I’ve seen), but they put the person’s actions and words under a microscope in public, and cherry-pick items that they can present as nefarious when viewed with a lens of unjustified suspicion, just like Rep. Westrup.
They act as though they are police detectives collecting evidence in a criminal investigation — but they have no accountability, no probable cause, and are publishing every lead and every speculation as though they are newsworthy. Meanwhile, they relentlessly criticize their targets over every sloppy word choice or any note-keeping practice that confuses an outsider, bombarding their targets with incessant requests for detailed information (often with FOI enforcement), and distracting them from the important work that they need to do — then treating it as evidence of a cover-up if their requests aren’t given top priority.
They use an expansive definition of ‘conflict of interest’ that dismisses most professional expertise (basically, if you’ve worked in a specialized profession, you can’t be trusted to comment on it objectively). And these ‘conflicts of interest’ aren’t simply caveats for understanding what has influenced a person’s opinion, but are treated as evidence of corruption and cover-ups.
They demand perfect transparency and objectivity from their targets, even as their own work is adamantly political and their funding is shrouded behind donor advised funds. They’ve managed to sow distrust where none was warranted. Just like the PR departments of the big organizations that USRTK criticizes, they’ve figured out how to manipulate the mainstream media by simply writing the story for them.
Previous dairies on this topic:
Edits: Fix link to their COVID-19 origins project announcement.