Until yesterday morning, I dismissed James O’Keefe and his Project Veritas as provocatory sleaze masquerading as journalism. O’Keefe is a modern-day Allen Funt, the creator of the popular 60s and 70s television show Candid Camera where pranks were pulled on people and their responses were secretly filmed by a hidden camera. It was all great fun.
O’Keefe also secretly films people, but he’s been known to unfairly harm them. One of his victims was veteran award-winning ABC journalist David Wright, who a Project Veritas agent engaged without identifying himself and disclosing he had a hidden camera. The agent got Wright to admit some damning allegations about his network, including that it routinely promoted the business interests of Disney, ABC’s corporate owner. ABC promptly suspended and demoted Wright after Project Veritas released its recorded footage.
As Wright wasn’t responsible for ABC’s biases and conflicts that clearly bothered him and were already well known, there was no public benefit harming his career. My commentary about the incident can be found here.
Another example of Project Veritas sleaze was seemingly trying to pass false sexual misconduct allegations about then Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore to The Washington Post, but the publication’s reporter didn’t take the bait. In 2010, O’Keefe settled for $100,000 a lawsuit with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) for Project Veritas videos purportedly showing members discussing illegal activities. O’Keefe also issued an apology.
Given my disdain and distrust of O’Keefe and his methods, I didn’t readily believe the video Project Veritas posted Wednesday evening purporting to show a top Pfizer executive making damning allegations about the company’s vaccine R&D efforts, boasting how Pfizer has regulators in its corporate back pockets, and gushing how the pandemic will prove to be a cash cow for many years to come. I expected someone atop Pfizer’s corporate ladder would possess a certain polish and speak with a scientific elegance conveying an intimidating intellectual brilliance.
The man in the video, identified as Jordon Trishton Walker and reportedly Pfizer’s Director of Research and Developments – Strategic Operations and mRNA Scientific Planning, didn’t remotely fit my imagined image. I anticipated, and frankly hoped, that a mainstream media “misinformation” reporter would promptly reveal that O’Keefe had been played and that Walker either didn’t work at Pfizer or didn’t have a significant role at the company. I remained skeptical even after Tucker Carlson featured the video on his Thursday night show. That’s not a knock aimed solely at Carlson; I don’t consider any of the broadcast networks reliable sources of information.
Pfizer Friday night implicitly confirmed the authenticity of Project Veritas’ video when around 8 p.m. it issued this news release saying it wanted to “set the record straight” regarding “allegations” that “have recently been made related to gain of function and directed evolution research at Pfizer.” Although Pfizer made no mention of Walker, it’s a safe bet that if he wasn’t a top executive at the company, the release would have “set the record straight” about his role as well.
Pfizer, with the assistance of social and mainstream media, has so far managed to contain widespread awareness and distribution of Project Veritas’ video. YouTube took the video down, the mainstream media has ignored the story, and Walker’s digital presence has been scrubbed. I know it’s cliched to say this, but Walker’s digital elimination is a page right out of Orwell’s “1984.”
Pfizer’s crisis management of the Walker video will ultimately worsen the situation. If Walker remains with Pfizer, or is believed to be employed at the company, he will remain a legitimate lightning rod. Had Pfizer said that Walker’s comments didn’t reflect the company’s values and no longer works at Pfizer could have mitigated a lot of damage.
More details about Walker have already emerged, and a question begging to be answered is how he rose to the highest echelons of Pfizer’s management with such limited experience.
Brian O’Shea, a Substack writer who describes himself as a Private Intelligence and Security Consultant, managed to retrieve considerable information about Walker. Much to my surprise, Walker is a physician licensed to practice in New York State. He did a urology residency at Boston’s prestigious and Harvard affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital from June 2018 to November 2019, after which he joined Boston Consulting Group (BCG), where he worked from November 2019 to June 2021. While working at BCG, Walker participated in a BCG sponsored Mandarin language and business immersion program.
Walker, who was awarded a scholarship for African American Medical Students/Scholars, received his MD degree in 2018 from the University of Texas’ Southwestern Medical School in Dallas. Little wonder he lacks the polish and presence one expects from a seasoned pharmaceutical executive. He’s only four years out of medical school.
University of Texas’ Medical Branch in Galveston figures prominently in Pfizer’s vaccine research. These noteworthy paragraphs were contained in this August 30, 2021 STAT news feature that uncritically outlined how Pfizer was creating new Covid variants:
Most other research centers insert the spike protein into a different, non-pathogenic virus, creating what’s called a pseudovirus, which requires a lower lab security level, but is also less accurate. And so Pfizer’s scientists use another method: The company has samples of the virus from the first Covid-19 case in the U.S., back in January 2020. To create a new variant, its scientists insert the new spike protein into the old SARS-2 virus.
“Our system is very different from a lot of other labs, and I think we’re the only one in the world doing it this way,” said Shi, a molecular biology professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch who’s working closely with Pfizer to study the variants.
Pre-pandemic, Pfizer’s Pearl River research center didn’t have a biosafety level 3 lab required to grow Covid-19 — with an air lock and scientists clothed in hooded white suits, gloves, impervious gowns, and using an air-purifying respirator. (Such a lab didn’t open until March 2021.) And so the spike protein is packed in ice and flown to Texas, where Shi inserts it into the existing SARS-2 virus to create the new variant.
Shi’s bio says he did Postdoc studies in biochemistry at Yale, where Walker’s bio says he earned a bachelor’s degree in molecular, cellular, and developmental biology.
Project Veritas’ meeting with Walker wasn’t a chance encounter. Someone obviously tipped the organization off that Walker was someone who could be hoodwinked into blabbing and advised how best to play him. After discovering that he was secretly filmed, Walker protested that he thought he was on a date. Dr. Robert Malone in his Saturday Substack newsletter said he was told that the person who conducted the Walker interview and captured it on video was a former Pfizer employee.
Project Veritas might still have another Walker shoe to drop. Steve Kirsch, a multimillionaire tech investor at the forefront of a movement questioning vaccine safety, advised his readers that O’Keefe has even more damaging footage than Project Veritas has so far released. Although I’ve previously cautioned about the reliability and accuracy of Kirsch’s claims, he sometimes is proved correct.
YouTube’s decision to take down the Walker interview might further provoke O’Keefe and his legions of supporters who are fed up with social media censorship. In a video expressing his anger about YouTube’s decision, O’Keefe alludes that he has sources within Pfizer. The censorship might prompt additional individuals within the company to come forward. Project Veritas’ video is still available online, Part 1 on O’Keefe’s website and Part 2 on Rumble.
My guess is that Pfizer is banking that the mainstream and social media will stand firm and avoid making mention of the Walker video, leaving Tucker Carlson as the only broadcast journalist with a sizeable audience who reported on the video. The mainstream media has trained their audiences that if Carlson covered a story, it’s likely for racist or white supremacist reasons.
As an example of the media’s “only Carlson covered it” dismissal, read this Forbes story by contributor by Bruce Y. Lee, which also explains why Forbes is an ailing publication that announced last February it had received a $200 million investment from the controversial crypto firm Binance to advise the company on its digital assets strategy.
Pfizer should also be concerned that ruptures are forming in the mainstream media’s refusal to cover critical information about vaccine safety. Canada’s CBC, a government funded network, reported on Saturday that more than 1,000 New Brunswick residents experienced adverse reactions to Covid vaccines, more than 300 of which were deemed “serious” by the province’s Department of Health. New Brunswick’s entire population is only 800,000. The CBC said about six people out of every 10,000 people vaccinated in Canada reported one or more adverse events.
I’m not an expert on acceptable vaccine adverse events, except to note that a U.S. national swine flu vaccination program was halted in 1976 because of three deaths that weren’t conclusively linked to the vaccine. New Brunswick’s Health ministry defines death as an adverse event but didn’t break down if or how many residents possibly died because of the Covid vaccine.
In the U.S., some reporters have taken off the kid gloves in their coverage of Pfizer. Michael Hiltzik, a business columnist with the Los Angeles Times, was taken aback by the response he received from a Pfizer spokesman justifying the company’s decision to hike the price of its vaccines.
In an email exchange, the Pfizer spokesman said the company’s vaccine and other therapies have “saved hundreds of lives (and) tens of billions of dollars in health care costs.” The spokesman said that Pfizer “has priced the vaccine to ensure the price is consistent with the value delivered.”
Said Hiltzik: “It’s impossible to overstate the moral depravity of this argument.”