The Pentagon has been sued for allegedly failing to reply to Freedom of Data Act (FOIA) requests pertaining to multi-million-dollar U.S. taxpayer-funded primate experiments at house and overseas.
White Coat Waste (WCW), a bipartisan authorities watchdog, filed the lawsuit in opposition to the Division of Protection to drive the discharge of photographs, movies and different information about what they describe as secretive U.S. navy primate labs in Thailand and Peru, as effectively in the USA.
The group, primarily based by itself investigation, claims that tons of of monkeys are being subjected to wasteful and lethal taxpayer-funded experiments costing tens of millions of {dollars}.
“From Fort Detrick to Peru to Thailand, our latest investigations have uncovered how tens of millions in navy monkey enterprise worldwide is being bankrolled by the Pentagon,” WCW Senior Vice President Justin Goodman advised Army.com. “Our new lawsuit covers 5 completely different FOIA requests that we submitted for movies and different paperwork, detailing Pentagon primate testing in U.S. and overseas labs.
“These requests have been both fully ignored or by no means fulfilled in violation of federal regulation.”
A Pentagon spokesperson advised Army.com that it doesn’t publicly touch upon pending litigation.
‘Troubling’ Findings, Lack of Authorities Response
WCW alleges that the precise navy primate labs they’ve investigated are breeding and shopping for tons of of monkeys, subjecting them to painful experiments that contain sleep deprivation, surgical mutilation, publicity to bioweapons like anthrax, and an infection with Ebola and different lethal illnesses.
“I feel most individuals could be stunned to be taught that the U.S. authorities, that means taxpayers, are the one largest funder of animal testing in all the world,” Goodman mentioned. “We have already seen the worst-case situation for animal testing come to life with what occurred in Wuhan, the place unchecked overseas animal experiments funded with U.S. tax {dollars} seemingly precipitated a pandemic and killed over 1 million Individuals.”
It is troubling that businesses just like the Division of Protection proceed to fund animal labs abroad once we’ve seen how disastrous it may be.
Federal reviews present that tons of of those primates getting used within the DOD’s experiments are utilized in painful experiments and fully denied any ache reduction, Goodman mentioned.
The lawsuit filed March 26 exhibits 5 FOIA requests submitted between June and December 2025 that concerned the next websites:
- Walter Reed Army Institute of Analysis – Armed Forces Analysis Institute of Medical Sciences (Thailand)
- U.S. Naval Medical Analysis Unit South (Peru)
- U.S. Army Medical Analysis Institute of Chemical Protection (Fort Detrick)
- U.S. Army Medical Analysis Institute of Infectious Ailments (Fort Detrick)
- Uniformed Providers College (Bethesda, MD)
Two of these requests have been fully ignored, he mentioned, that means they have been by no means acknowledged regardless of repeated follow-ups. Three others have been acknowledged initially once they have been submitted however by no means fulfilled and by no means led to any follow-up.
A kind of requests fully ignored was the Thailand-related lab, whereas the opposite was a Fort Detrick website.
Goodman mentioned WCW triangulates data from federal open-source spending databases like USAspending, peer-reviewed papers and DOD databases.
“We have been capable of put the items collectively to find out that not solely is the Pentagon conducting experiments on primates right here in the USA, on the Navy, on the Army, on the Air Power, but in addition [that] they’ve overseas laboratories which might be escaping scrutiny in locations like Peru and Thailand,” Goodman mentioned.
Lawsuit Claims Federal Inaction
The lawsuit claims a scarcity of correspondence on behalf of the federal authorities.
A FOIA request submitted on June 24, 2025, by WCW to White Coat Waste submitted a FOIA request to the U.S. Army Medical Analysis & Growth Command (USAMRDC) searching for copies “of any lively IACUC-approved protocols involving using no less than one non-human primate, being carried out by, or at the side of the U.S. Army Medical Analysis Institute of Chemical Protection (USAMRICD) or U.S. Army Medical Analysis Institute of Infectious Ailments (USAMRIID).
Sooner or later later, USAMRDC supposedly acknowledged the request and assigned it a monitoring quantity. On July 28, the request was “in course of.” That was the final correspondence pertaining to that particular request.
A separate request was submitted to the Workplace of the Secretary of Protection and Joint Workers (OSD/JS) searching for “a duplicate of any lively IACUC-approved protocols involving using no less than one non-human primate, being carried out by, or at the side of the Uniformed Providers College.”
The identical day, OSD/JS acknowledged the request and assigned it a monitoring quantity. Two days later, the company knowledgeable WCW that this request was positioned in its advanced processing queue together with “roughly 3,895 open requests,” based on the go well with. No additional response was ever offered.
The lab in Thailand is described because the Pentagon’s largest, established in 1980 and presently housing roughly 550 monkeys in captivity. It’s operated by the U.S. Army in collaboration with the Royal Thai Army and the Walter Reed Army Institute of Analysis–Armed Forces Analysis Institute of Medical Sciences.
WCW, citing inner paperwork, claims that the ability breeds round 30–45 further rhesus and cynomolgus macaque monkeys annually to be used in painful testing.
“These monkeys are abused in experiments involving infectious illnesses like malaria, Zika, dengue, typhus, shigella and SHIV,” they mentioned. “They’re surgically mutilated, deliberately contaminated with illnesses, compelled to ingest medication, fed to disease-carrying mosquitoes, and subjected to sleep deprivation exams.”
Previous Success in Eliminating Experimental Funding
The lawsuit comes months after President Donald Trump signed the Nationwide Protection Authorization Act (NDAA) in December 2025 that features funding cuts for the DOD’s “painful” canine and cat experiments—the primary ever to defund the division’s canine and cat testing.
“Early final yr, we uncovered how the DOD was funding over $57 million in canine and cat experiments across the labs within the U.S. and abroad,” Goodman mentioned.
In Could 2025, Navy Secretary John Phelan fully banned canine and cat testing. He canceled a $10 million contract for, as Goodman described, “constipation experiments on cats the place they have been having marbles shoved into their rectums and being electrical electroshocked.”
Goodman mentioned that WCW has discovered the Pentagon “to be extremely responsive” and has taken swift motion when such packages have been delivered to their consideration,” including, “It hasn’t been the identical throughout all the authorities.”
That features “problematic packages” involving purported canine and cat abuse and instituted by the earlier Biden administration being renewed by the Nationwide Institutes of Well being (NIH), for instance, receiving new funding beneath the present Trump administration “regardless of guarantees to section them out.”
“So, at different businesses, the rhetoric doesn’t match the fact, however we have discovered that the DOD to be extremely responsive and proactive in attempting to chop wasteful animal exams,” he mentioned.
There’s a disconnect between company heads taking the difficulty severely and FOIA places of work not maintaining, Goodman added.
