This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

A paper titled Proximal Origin on the deadly COVID-19 pandemic that circled the globe and killed millions was published on March 17, 2020, just as the death-dealing virus was exploding.

It, according to a new report from a University of Colorado scientist, was "one of the most-cited and discussed papers of 2020" and it described any thought of the "research-related" origins of the virus as "a crack-pot conspiracy theory."

"The paper was wildly successful in achieving the goal articulated in private by its authors — to shut down further discussion and debate on the possibility of a lab leak," explained Rogert Pielke Jr., who studies the intersection of science and public policy/politics.

Anthony Fauci, the presidential health adviser and one of the more prominent deniers of the lab release theory, cited that particular study shortly after.

He said, responding to a question about COVID origins, "There was a study recently that we can make available to you, where a group of highly qualified evolutionary virologists looked at the sequences there and the sequences in bats as they evolve. And the mutations that it took to get to the point where it is now is totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human."

But, Pielke explained, one of the study authors, Robert Garry, had written in private messaging about that same time, "I really can't think of a plausible natural scenario … I just can't figure out how this gets accomplished in nature … Of course, in the lab, it would be easy…"

Pielke cited a coming congressional hearing on the "cover-up" which refers to the scheme "put into place by a small group of scientists at the request of U.S. government officials to quash any public discussion of the possibility that COVID-19 resulted from a research-related incident — known colloquially as a lab leak."

"Let me state the obvious, "This is a big effing deal, as Joe Biden might say. Scientists and government officials conspired — yes, conspired — to mislead the public by knowingly promoting misinformation in the guise of a peer-reviewed paper in a major journal. Given the stakes, this is a scientific scandal with huge significance," he explained,

He dubbed the scandal "COVIDGATE," and said, "The cover-up was designed to render the possibility of a 'laboratory-based scenario' off limits for public discussion or investigation. The cover-up was wildly successful in stopping further public discussion of a lab leak for several years until information about the cover-up started to become public. In fact, perhaps the cover-up was too successful, which may explain why the scientists and government officials are now under such scrutiny."

The paper, assembled by so-called scientists working with the U.S. government, found, "[W]e do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible."

But, he wrote, that "is not what the authors of the paper actually believed when they wrote it."

Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, in fact, show those scientists participating "worked to shape a misleading public narrative via the scientific literature at the request of government officials, who then promoted the misleading narrative from the White House."

Soon there was a conference call among government officials and scientists, with the focus being "the possibility that COVID-19 was engineered."

An influential scientist, Ron Fouchier, then concluded that a discussion of lab leak evidence "would unnecessarily distract top researchers from their active duties and do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular."

Others who worked on the Proximal Origins paper expressed concerns similar to Garry's.

Pielke wrote, "In sum, a group of scientists, 'prompted' by government officials and 'shepherded' by [Jeremy] Farrar, [director of the Wellcome Trust, a large British biomedical Foundation] (not listed among the authors), chose to misrepresent in a 'scientific' article published in a major journal what they knew and believed, as expressed in private emails. Farrar not only shepherded the paper but also contacted Nature to pressure the journal to publish it. One stated purpose of the misrepresentation was to protect 'science' from the scrutiny that might result from serious consideration of a lab leak possibility," he wrote.