The challenge was daunting. All the players knew that Dr. Fauci was the only one with legal authority to fire Dr. Fishbein. NIAID human resources officers originally told Dr. Fishbein that Dr. Fauci had authorized his firing. Dr. Fauci later protested to various investigators from NIH and the US Congress that he had not ordered the firing. The NIH also denied that Dr. Fauci had ordered the firing. Dr. Fishbein calls this statement a lie: “I was a Title 42 special expert: paid outside the agency budget. Dr. Fauci was the only NIAID officer with authority to fire me.”
Dr. Fishbein’s reputation, his integrity, and his sterling work record presented additional obstacles. In November 2003, three months before his dismissal, Dr. Fauci presented Dr. Fishbein with a commendation for exceptional work at NIAID. Three months later, on February 9, 2004, Dr. Tramont also recognized Dr. Fishbein’s outstanding job performance by recommending him to receive a $2,500 Service Recognition Award. Five days later, on February 13, 2004, Kagan blocked the processing of the award, canceled the $2,500 merit prize.
DAIDS officials followed these actions with an exchange of frantic emails discussing how to axe Dr. Fishbein without implicating Fauci. In a February 23, 2004, note to Kagan, Tramont said, “Jon, let’s start working on this—Tony [Fauci] will not want anything to come back on us, so we are going to have to have iron-clad documentation, no sense of harassment or unfairness and, like other personnel actions, this is going to take some work. In Clausewitzian style, we must overwhelm with ‘force.’ We will prepare our paper work, then . . . go from there.” Several of Dr. Fauci’s other trusted subordinates joined the email chain with recommendations for how to blow up Dr. Fishbein’s career while keeping Dr. Fauci’s hands clean.
Said Farber, “Jonathan Fishbein [was] tarred and feathered for pointing out that the NIH flagship study on Nevirapine was a complete disaster. Fishbein’s failure to fall into line, his failure to understand that Nevirapine was too important to fail, meant that the AIDS bureaucracy’s neutralizing antibodies had to be activated to destroy him.”
Between February 14–18, after Tramont notified Dr. Fishbein that he was now reporting to Kagan—the same man whom he had recently cited for disciplinary action—Dr. Fishbein exchanged emails with Tramont (then traveling in Thailand) requesting an explanation for this odd demotion that had him working for a lower-level employee who was a key target of his misconduct investigation. An elusive Tramont refused to explain the decision and answered with a vague remonstration reminiscent of Dr. Fauci’s signature obfuscating gobbledygook:
It has not been lost on me that the most complaints [about Kagan] I heard from our constituents when I arrived revolved around [complaints filed by Dr. Fishbein’s branch] and since you have arrived, I have NOT heard a single complaint; and when I have inquired about that, the answer has been the charge brought by you.
On February 25, 2004, Kagan canned Dr. Fishbein. Kagan explained to Dr. Fishbein that he had failed in every aspect of his job and that his bosses saw no chance for improvement. Kagan advised Dr. Fishbein to leave DAIDS immediately. Dr. Fishbein opted to stay and fight his dismissal.
Dr. Fishbein first wrote to Tramont and Dr. Fauci requesting a meeting. He never received a reply. He next appealed to Dr. Fauci’s ostensible boss, NIH Director Elias Zerhouni, who likewise refused to meet with him. NIH banned all employees from speaking about or to Dr. Fishbein. “Everyone was terrified of Fauci,” says Dr. Fishbein. “He runs the agency like a vindictive dictator. Everyone is frightened of him; everyone knows that you never cross Fauci.” In Farber’s words, “Fishbein became a ‘ghost.’ Nobody addressed him in the corridors, in the elevators, in the cafeteria. ‘There was an active campaign to humiliate me,’ he recalls. ‘It was as if I had AIDS in the early days. I was like Tom Hanks in Philadelphia. Nobody would come near me.’”
On February 26, 2004, Dr. Fishbein met with NIH’s Office of Management Assessment (OMA) to complain about the actions against him. OMA also declined to investigate. On March 1, 2004, Dr. Fishbein brought his charges to the HHS Inspector General. The IG, similarly, refused to lift the carpet at NIH. Later that month, in desperation, Dr. Fishbein moved for whistleblower protection and sought a Congressional investigation of the wide-ranging corruption at NIAID.
On Capitol Hill, he at last found sympathetic ears. Dr. Fishbein told investigators for United States Senator Charles E. Grassley (R-IA) and Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and ranking minority member, respectively, that his sacking was retribution for his reports of wrongdoing in the Nevirapine and Proleukin trials. Both senators began clamoring for HHS to investigate Dr. Fauci’s corruption charges against NIAID, and to answer the troubling questions Dr. Fishbein had raised about the homicidal studies in Tennessee and Uganda, and sexual harassment and mismanagement in NIAID’s home office.
In a series of stern letters to NIH Director Zerhouni and his boss, HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt, Senators Arlen Specter and Herb Kohl joined Grassley and Baucus in rebuking NIH for inaction on Dr. Fishbein’s complaints. Maryland Congressper-sons Reps. Ben Cardin, Barbara Mikulski, and Steny Hoyer signed a similar letter. It’s illustrative of Dr. Fauci’s overwhelming power that he and his bosses decided to ignore and defy these remonstrances. After all, these three representatives were the royalty of NIH’s home state delegation.
In May 2004, under pressure from lawmakers, NIH agreed to commission an Institute of Medicine (IOM) investigation of HIVNET 012. The Institute of Medicine, a branch of the National Academies of Sciences, is ostensibly Congress’s independent and trustworthy advisor on scientific issues. IOM regularly assembles panels of top scientists to oversee and review agency science. The presumption is that while regulated industries easily capture and compromise federal agencies, the Institute of Medicine is incorruptible. IOM members do not work for either industry or the government. Congress expects to get the straight poop from IOM.
However, by that time, Dr. Fauci had already figured out how to control the IOM with invisible strings. The Capitol Hill lawmakers never realized that Dr. Fauci’s PIs dominated the IOM panel that assembled to investigate his wrongdoing. Six of its nine members were NIAID grant recipients then conducting their own trials for Dr. Fauci, with annual grants ranging from $120,000 to $2 million. The IOM’s study on Dr. Fishbein’s charges was predictably, therefore, yet another whitewash. The IOM panel strategically adopted an extremely narrow scope of investigation that did not include NIAID’s outrageous misconduct in Uganda or Tennessee. On April 7, 2004, the IOM panel reported its finding that the HIVNET 012 data should be considered valid.55