EXCLUSIVE — The National Institutes of Health is facing congressional scrutiny after two of its scientists were charged with allegedly smuggling vials of the infectious monkeypox virus and other biological samples into the United States, according to a copy of a letter shared exclusively with the Washington Examiner on Tuesday.NIH researchers Vincent Munster and Claude Kwe, both foreign nationals, are accused of conspiring to sneak undeclared biological material into the U.S. and lying to federal law enforcement about its content.Munster and Kwe were flagged at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport in January while returning on a commercial flight from the Republic of the Congo’s Brazzaville region, where a massive monkeypox outbreak was actively occurring.
According to the June 2 criminal complaint, Munster and Kwe falsely told Customs and Border Protection inspection officers, when questioned, that the large, black plastic case they were carrying simply contained “diagnostics and testing equipment.”
However, prosecutors say federal agents found it contained 113 vials stuffed inside Styrofoam coolers. According to the charging documents, of the 20 vials tested at the time of the complaint, FBI investigators determined that 17 of them concealed deactivated monkeypox virus, one contained the chickenpox virus, and two others contained human DNA.
