WASHINGTON — Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Friday released a first batch of declassified documents that she said show longstanding U.S. government funding for more than 120 biological laboratories in over 30 countries, including Ukraine, and accused previous officials of hiding the programs from the public.

The release came during Gabbard's final days in office. She announced in May that she would step down to care for her husband following his cancer diagnosis, with her last day set for June 19.

In a statement posted by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Gabbard said her office had spent months reviewing intelligence community holdings before making the materials public. She framed the disclosure as carrying out President Donald Trump's executive order ending federal funding of gain-of-function research. Trump signed that order, EO 14292, on May 5, 2025.

Gain-of-function research refers to laboratory work that alters an organism to give it a new ability or strengthen an existing one. Much of it is routine and uncontroversial, covering ordinary work like engineering bacteria for medical use.

The category at the center of federal restrictions is narrower. It involves modifying dangerous pathogens to make them spread more easily or cause more severe disease, work that scientists say can help predict and prepare for future outbreaks. The risk is that an enhanced pathogen could escape through a lab accident or safety breach.

That fear drives the politics around the term today.

Critics of the research point to COVID-19 and the theory, still debated among scientists and investigators, that the virus came from a lab in Wuhan, China, where related coronavirus work was underway.

"Today, I'm releasing never before seen intelligence revealing new evidence of past US government funding for more than 120 biolabs in over 30 countries, including Ukraine," Gabbard wrote.

The ODNI release made several specific claims. It said many of the funded labs currently or previously conducted research using hazardous and highly contagious pathogens, in some cases including gain-of-function work, with limited oversight. It said the intelligence community had previously warned that one U.S.-funded lab in Ukraine likely housed dangerous pathogens and remained vulnerable to Russian attack, seizure or damage. It also said new collection guidance Gabbard issued to the intelligence community is already surfacing details on clinical trials underway at some facilities, which the office said raises ethical, financial and security concerns.

Gabbard directed sharp language at former officials. "Politicians, so-called health professionals like Dr. Fauci, and entities within the Biden administration's national security team lied to the American people about the existence of U.S.-funded and supported biolabs, and threatened those who attempted to expose the truth," she said. The release stated that information about the labs "had been knowingly withheld from the American people."

The declassified material, posted as a slide deck on the ODNI website, is partially redacted. It details lab locations and functions and highlights the Institute of Experimental and Clinical Veterinary Medicine in Kharkiv, Ukraine. The slides cite biosafety deficiencies in areas handling Brucella bacteria and reference pathogens including anthrax, Ebola and swine fever. ODNI said additional document batches will follow.

What can be established independently is that the United States has funded overseas biological research for decades through the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, originally the Nunn-Lugar program, launched in 1991 to secure weapons-of-mass-destruction materials after the Soviet collapse. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency manages it. In Ukraine, the Defense Department has invested roughly $200 million since 2005, supporting about 46 Ukrainian labs and health facilities through the Biological Threat Reduction Program. The Defense Department published fact sheets describing this work in 2022, and the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv posted material about the program as early as 2020.

The existence of the funding is therefore documented and predates Friday's release. What remains contested is Gabbard's characterization of it. Prior Defense Department fact sheets and independent arms-control experts have stated the facilities are owned and operated by host countries, function as public-health and animal-health labs, and that Ukraine maintains no biological weapons program. A version of the claim that the labs were secret U.S. bioweapons sites circulated widely in 2022 and was disputed at the time by those experts. Whether the newly declassified material changes that assessment is not yet clear, and ODNI's release does not allege the labs produced biological weapons.

ODNI said the intelligence community would continue working with other agencies to identify where the labs are, what pathogens they hold, and what research they conduct.