Lies and scandal: How two rogue scientists at a secret lab triggered a national security calamity

A high-security lab. Ebola. A mysterious package. The Chinese military.

The release earlier this week of hundreds of documents related to the dismissal of two scientists — Dr. Xiangguo Qiu and her husband Keding Cheng — has pulled back the curtain on an explosive national security probe at the Winnipeg-based National Microbiology Lab, part of the Canadian Science Centre for Human and Animal Health (CSCHAH).

The investigation — and the fight to make information about the investigation public — took years.

According to Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) documents, the agency's National Security Management Division was advised in September 2018 that Qiu had been listed as the inventor on a Chinese patent that might have contained scientific information produced at the CSCHAH in Winnipeg — and that she shared that data without authority.

Speaking to investigators from Presidia Security Consulting, the outside firm hired by PHAC to conduct a fact-finding mission, Qiu, then head of vaccines and antivirals with the CSCHAH's zoonotic diseases and special pathogens division, said she didn't know her name was on the patent.

According to Presidia's March 2019 report, multiple interview subjects, including PHAC's chief science officer, told investigators that it was highly unlikely that a researcher's name would appear on a patent without their knowledge.

The patent dealt with a treatment for Ebola. Fellow employees at the National Microbiology Lab interviewed as part of PHAC's fact-finding mission said the patent likely used information the CSCHAH lab had collected while searching for molecules and compounds that could inhibit Ebola.

The National Security Management Division also began an investigation into allegations that Cheng also had breached security policies in relation to students under his supervision.

Their interviews pointed to some lax security practices at the National Microbiology Lab. For example, in May 2018 a package from China labelled "kitchen utensils" arrived at the lab addressed to Cheng. An X-ray showed it contained vials containing a substance that was later found to be mouse protein. Cheng told investigators he didn't know it was coming and it wasn't infectious.

Other interview subjects (their names are redacted in the documents) suggested visitors were allowed on the premises without escorts. One subject said she heard of an incident where individuals were trying to remove vials. 

"[Restricted visitors], they run amok. They have a sense of entitlement," she said.

The initial PHAC fact-finding mission raised many more questions.

On July 5, 2019 Qiu and Cheng were told they were subjects of an administrative investigation and ordered to stay home. At that point, their access cards and computer accounts were deactivated.

By February 2020, PHAC had determined the couple violated multiple policies by, among other things, shipping antibodies outside of the lab without authorization — including to the China National Institute for Food and Drugs — and failing to monitor restricted visitors who were later accused of removing government property without permission.