The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) now believes the Covid-19 virus originated in a Chinese lab, The New York Times reported on Saturday.
Five years after Chinese authorities first identified a new coronavirus spreading in Wuhan, China, the CIA has made a decision with “low confidence” that the pandemic is spreading in one of the city's laboratories. . The New York Times reported. Three intelligence community elements have now assessed that the pandemic began with a laboratory accident. This is a hypothesis that was once considered a conspiracy theory by some and censored on social media. The CIA joined the Department of Energy in determining that the pandemic had a lab origin with low confidence, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation assessed the lab origin with moderate confidence.
The National Intelligence Council and four intelligence community elements have determined that the pandemic is of natural origin, but one remaining intelligence community element remains undetermined.
This news follows the Senate confirmation of CIA Director John Ratcliffe on Thursday. Ratcliffe, who served as director of national intelligence from 2020 to 2021, has long said classified intelligence implicates Wuhan's lab. Ratcliffe also claims that the CIA was dithered in public assessments due to political concerns. (Related: Senate overwhelmingly confirms John Ratcliffe to lead CIA despite DEM Holdhout)
“My informed assessment as someone with as much or more access to government intelligence than anyone else in the first year of the outbreak of the virus and the onset of the pandemic is that the lab leaks are legitimately supported by us. science and common sense continue to be the only explanation. Ratcliffe testified. To a subcommittee of the House on the 2023 Coronavirus Pandemic. “In fact, this is a trial, and the pressure of circumstantial evidence provided by our intelligence will compel the jury's findings on the charges that the Wuhan Institute's coronavirus research was responsible. To create a global pandemic.”
According to a report in The New York Times, the new conclusion is that Wuhan lab conditions. However, there is no new material in the public inspection.
The revelations follow news that outgoing National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has been tasked with Office of the Director of National Intelligence Assemble the panels and take a new look at the origins of the pandemic. The 11th-hour move was reminiscent of when a cadre of experts within the State Department was released. fact sheet There is classified information surrounding the Wiuhan Institute and during the waning days of the first Trump administration internal resistance to their investigation;.
Ratcliffe has expressed concern about politicization within the intelligence community regarding China and Covid-19, particularly within the CIA.
“As we pushed to declassify information exposing some of what the U.S. government knew about the origins of the virus and the Communist Party's initial cover-up, we faced continued opposition, especially from Langley. I did,” Ratcliffe wrote. 2023 op-ed. “When preparing the president's daily briefs, it was not uncommon to ask why the CIA's assessment of China appeared to be at odds with intelligence from 17 other U.S. spy agencies.”
It remains to be seen whether Ratcliffe will continue to push for this intelligence declassification in his new role.
Others have raised concerns about the fairness and rigor of the intelligence community's assessment, including concerns that virologists with undisclosed biases have shaped the intelligence community's views.
in Letter of November 2024Republican Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas raised the alarm that close collaborators at the Wuhan Virology Institute may have shaped the intelligence community's understanding of the issue. ODNI consults with the Biological Sciences Experts Group, a group of non-governmental scientists that advises on biosecurity issues. Ralph Barrick, a virologist at the University of North Carolina who worked on coronavirus engineering projects at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, is affiliated with the group, according to the letter.
Records obtained through the Right to Know Freedom of Information Act of 2023 showed Kristian Andersen, a virologist at the Scripps Institute.I contacted National Institutes of Health leadership in the early pandemic about a prominent scientific article that dismissed the lab leak theory, which I briefed State Department analysts on in March 2020.
According to December, the Office of the Inspector General for Defense Services has launched an investigation into whether an assessment by scientists at the National Center for Medical Information was improperly excluded from the presidential brief. wall street journal report.
Some subcommittees of the House on the Coronavirus Pandemic sent letter In September 2023, a CIA analyst who assessed the origins of the pandemic revealed a whistleblower's testimony that forced him to change his conclusions pending through “financial incentives.” but, Committee final report No further information was included regarding this line of inquiry.
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