Celeste Solum
September 30, 2026
These dates, papers, and links look scattered until you line them up, then you can see what happened.
“This should have been a classified experiment that never should have been done in the first place.”
Anthony Fauci, March 2016 diary, released September 2026
Last week Just the News published diary entries from Anthony Fauci. Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rand Paul obtained them. The entries are from March 2016.
Fauci had just learned that the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick had run aerosol challenge tests with Ebola in monkeys. His own institute, NIAID, had funded the work under a task order and helped design the study.
He wrote that the people at USAMRIID were idiots. He wrote that the experiment should have been classified. He wrote that it never should have been done.
That diary is the new information. . The rest of this timeline was already in the published USAMEIID studies and in my earlier reports.
What An Aerosol Challenge Is
Start with the words, because that is where people get lost.
An aerosol vaccine means the dose is inhaled. Japan, the United States, and the Soviet Union worked on aerosol measles vaccine in the early and mid-1960s. U.S. papers from 1961 to 1966 also describe aerogenic live tularemia vaccine in animals and in people. That is vaccine delivered through the air.
That is not the same thing as a vaccinated person shedding vaccine into a room and infecting other people.
An aerosol challenge is different again. Researchers put a virus into a mist. They drive it into an animal’s lungs on purpose. Then they watch what the disease does, and whether a vaccine holds.
That is a lab method. It does not prove that Ebola spreads through the air in ordinary human outbreaks. The published USAMRIID studies keep those two questions separate: One question is how Ebola usually spreads from person to person. The other is what happens when researchers force the virus into an animal’s lungs on purpose. Both facts are true. They are not the same fact. Do not mix them up
The Paper Trail
1995. USAMRIID published “Lethal experimental infections of rhesus monkeys by aerosolized Ebola virus” in the International Journal of Experimental Pathology. They used a head-only exposure system. Droplets were 0.8 to 1.2 microns. Doses as low as 400 plaque-forming units killed the animals in four to five days. Peter Jahrling is one of the authors.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1997182
2008. A VSV-based vaccine study in Vaccine showed protection in cynomolgus macaques after aerosol challenge with Ebola and with Marburg. Vaccinated animals lived. Control animals died. The authors wrote that filoviruses are not thought to spread by aerosol in nature, and that inhalation is among the most likely routes in a bioterror event.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18930776
2015. NIAID-linked teams published aerosol vaccine work. One study in the Journal of Clinical Investigation tested an inhalable Ebola vaccine in rhesus macaques and reported protection. NIH posted a summary. That work is vaccine by aerosol, not the later Army challenge Fauci was angry about.
The same period is when NIAID funded aerosol challenge comparisons of Ebola vaccines in nonhuman primates at USAMRIID. The Senate fact sheet attached to the new memos says the Fort Detrick study compared four vaccines in groups of four monkeys. The exposure drove virus deep into the lung in a way natural infection would not.
What Fauci wrote in 2016
Just the News published the diary and the emails on September 27, 2026. Steven Richards and John Solomon wrote the piece.
Fauci recorded that almost all of the aerosol-challenged animals died. He recorded that vaccinated animals had more inflammation in the lung than the unvaccinated animals. He later wrote that earlier Department of Defense work had already shown that pattern, and that the new tests were meant to see if it was real and if it mattered.
He also wrote that this work mattered for biodefense and had little to do with naturally emerging Ebola outbreaks. That sentence is his, not mine.
At the same time, the United States was planning vaccine studies in West Africa and talking about using a VSV vaccine as a ring vaccine if more outbreaks hit. Fauci wrote that officials in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone were furious. He used rougher language than that.
He said he had to brief the National Security Council from a SCIF. He spelled it SKIF. He told a subordinate to get him the whole truth before that meeting. He said no one would be hurt for a mistake if they told the truth. He said anyone who held information back would be gone.
He blamed “the foolish DOD people” for circulating the data inside the government and the embassies. He said the research should be classified because it “could indicate a vulnerability.” The memos show NIAID and Army researchers had not treated the work as classified until Fauci saw the results.
Rand Paul said NIAID was funding risky research with the Defense Department, and that when the results turned bad Fauci argued for classification. Paul is using the record to push the Risky Research Review Act.
A later claim in this file is that NIAID paused aerosol challenge studies after internal concern, and that Peter Jahrling warned that treating the work as dual-use research of concern would gut medical countermeasure development. That exact sentence is not in the diary package released last week. What is in the Just the News file is Jahrling writing that plans would continue for a “CoV study” when the lights turned green. The committee said it is unclear whether CoV meant coronavirus. In 2016, MERS was already in the file.
In my research I uncovered no documentation for any pause on dual-use research. I refer you to the Federal Register on Communicable Diseases, August 15, 2016. It went into effect 90 days later on October 15, 2016. It clearly references Ebola and Coronavirus.
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/08/15/2016-18103/control-of-communicable-diseases
These things happened in the same stretch of time
August 15, 2016, HHS and CDC published a proposed rule, Control of Communicable Diseases, Federal Register document 2016-18103. It was framed around Ebola, MERS, and measles. The final rule came in January 2017 and took effect in March 2017. It expanded how CDC described its quarantine and isolation tools.
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/08/15/2016-18103/control-of-communicable-diseases
That rule is not the Army monkey study. It is the public-health control layer that moved in the same year Fauci was privately calling the aerosol work a mess that should have stayed classified.
I have been writing the delivery side for years. In 2018 she covered the Hazards of Dynamic Outdoor Release project, HODOR, under the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate. Official descriptions talk about how outdoor aerosol releases move around buildings, ventilation, and heating.
In 2021 I published “The Secret of Aerogel: Smoke From Hell.” In 2024 I published “Particles of Destruction,” on control of particulates. Those reports stand on their own. This article puts them next to the USAMRIID studies and the Fauci diary.
NBAF
The National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility in Manhattan, Kansas, belongs on this timeline. NBAF is the replacement for the old Plum Island Animal Disease Center. It is a USDA lab. It is built to handle large livestock at biosafety level 4. Construction finished in 2022. The lab has been standing up staff and work since then.
Local reporting in 2025 said at least 28 NBAF employees were notified of termination during the USDA cuts. Some were later rehired. USDA said a smaller number of probationary administrative jobs stayed cut. In 2026 the director said the lab was hiring again toward a staff of about 400. That is the public personnel record.
My point is different.The public record shows firings and swine work. It shows almost nothing about what a BSL-4 livestock lab actually runs. I used to be able to watch Plum Island more closely, including sloppy student footage, and then watch similar work show up in other countries. That is a warning. It is not a document I can footnote today.
Say what we can source. NBAF exists. It is the Plum Island replacement. It is BSL-4 for large animals. Public detail on its hottest experiments is thin. If more paper comes out, print it. Do not invent the contents of rooms we have not seen.
What holds
The United States has known how to put live vaccine in the air since the 1960s.
The Army showed in 1995 that aerosolized Ebola can kill monkeys.
Vaccine teams tested protection against that route in 2008 and after.
NIAID paid for Army aerosol challenge work on Ebola vaccines.
In 2016 Fauci called that work a mistake that should have been classified, because vaccinated animals looked worse in the lung and because West African officials were already on edge about the vaccine plan.
He said the work was about biodefense, not ordinary outbreak spread.
The same year, CDC moved a communicable-disease control rule.
I have been tracking outdoor particle tests, aerogel, and the shift from Plum Island to NBAF. Those are separate files. They belong on the same desk because they are about how material moves through air, and who controls the work.
None of that requires a speech. It requires the dates, the papers, and the diary in the same place.
If an experiment can be done in a chamber at Fort Detrick, it can be written down. If the people who funded it later say it should have been classified, the public is entitled to the sentence they wrote.
Sources
Just the News, Sept. 27, 2026: https://justthenews.com/government/congress/fauci-alarmed-over-us-army-ebola-tests-funded-his-own-agency-diary-entries-and
Johnson et al., Int J Exp Pathol, 1995: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1997182/
Geisbert et al., Vaccine, 2008: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18930776/
Meyer et al., J Clin Invest, 2015: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26168222/
NIH IRP summary, July 13, 2015: https://irp.nih.gov/news-and-events/in-the-news/investigational-aerosolized-ebola-vaccine-shows-promise-in-nonhuman
Hornick and Eigelsbach, Bacteriol Rev, 1966: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC378235/
Federal Register, Aug. 15, 2016, 2016-18103: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/08/15/2016-18103/control-of-communicable-diseases
Celeste Solum, HODOR: https://celestialreport.com/hodor-a-time-to-dye/
Celeste Solum, Aerogel, 2021: https://celestialreport.com/the-secret-of-aerogel-smoke-from-hell/
Celeste Solum, Particles of Destruction, 2024: https://celestialreport.com/particles-of-destruction-2/
The Mercury, NBAF cuts: https://themercury.com/news/source-at-least-28-nbaf-employees-fired-as-part-of-usdas-cuts/article_12087e38-ed5a-11ef-9771-87bba050d7f1.html