In one of her last acts as director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard released hundreds of pages of files related to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s role in the debate over the origins of COVID-19, including his alleged efforts to shape intelligence assessments and his testimony to Congress. These files do more than revive old questions about Fauci’s credibility. They show that many of the people dismissed as conspiracy theorists deserved to be taken seriously.

From the lab-leak theory of COVID-19’s origin to questions about gain-of-function research, voices across social media and even inside the government were ignored, ridiculed, or silenced. The media often framed skepticism about China’s role in the pandemic as xenophobia and reported extensively on a wave of anti-Asian hate that followed the outbreak. But asking whether a virus first detected in Wuhan might have escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan was never inherently racist. It was an obvious question.