A majority of the U.S. Intelligence Community’s 17 spy agencies believe the coronavirus likely originated with an accidental lab escape from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, a senior intelligence official told the Washington Examiner.
The official also noted dissenting agencies remain open to the theory.
For weeks, speculation has swirled around the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a Biosafety Level 4 Lab in China, amid a debate over whether it originated there or in a nearby wet market, as was widely believed. The Intelligence Community does not believe the coronavirus was bioengineered nor that it was purposefully released from the lab.
The positions of specific spy agencies, such as the CIA or the National Security Agency, were not immediately clear.
The Daily Caller cited a senior intelligence official earlier Saturday who stated the majority view among U.S. spy agencies is that COVID-19 is natural and that it was accidentally leaked out of a Wuhan lab.
John Roberts of Fox News reported something similar.
“There is agreement among most of the 17 Intelligence agencies that COVID-19 originated in the Wuhan lab. The source stressed that the release is believed to be a MISTAKE, and was not intentional,” Roberts tweeted on Saturday, adding, “Sources say not all 17 intelligence agencies agree that the lab was the source of the virus because there is not yet a definitive ‘smoking gun.’ But confidence is high among 70-75% of the agencies.”
Fox News further reported that “the agencies have come down to two potential origins for the accident — animal-human transmission, or a mistake in the lab, but there is evidence of both options with most leaning toward the laboratory explanation — although both scenarios are attributable to mistakes.”
A senior U.S. intelligence official told CBS News on Friday that U.S. spy agencies were looking into two possible origins of the coronavirus in China (either a jump from an infected animal to humans through physical contact or via an accidental escape from a Wuhan lab), and both theories were being scrutinized. The official said “evidence of both scenarios exists,” but the person didn’t say which scenario was being deemed more likely.
State Department cables in 2018 warned about biosecurity and management problems at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The Education Department is currently investigating potentially undisclosed financial ties between the University of Texas and the Chinese lab.
Concerns have also been raised about the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention, a Biosafety Level 2 lab that is also in fairly close proximity to the Wuhan wet market.
The World Health Organization concluded the COVID-19 virus first appeared in Wuhan, the capital of China’s Hubei province, and an investigative report in February found “early cases identified in Wuhan are believed to have acquired infection from a zoonotic source” in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. Gao Fu, the director of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, claimed that “the origin of the new coronavirus is the wildlife sold illegally in a Wuhan seafood market.”
During a Thursday press conference, Roberts began to ask Trump about his thoughts on the coronavirus’s origins when the president cut him off.
“We’re looking at that, John, separately from — we’re looking at exactly where it came from, who it came from, how it happened, separately, and also scientifically, so we’re going to be able to find out,” he said.
Asked if he had seen any information that gives him a high degree of confidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the origin of this virus, Trump replied in the affirmative, noting the “the World Health Organization should be ashamed of themselves, because they’re like the public relations agency of China.”
Trump said last month the United States would cut funding to the “China-centric” WHO.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees and coordinates the 17 different U.S. spy offices and agencies, weighed in with the U.S. Intelligence Community’s official position on Thursday, noting that “the entire” bloc “has been consistently providing critical support to U.S. policymakers and those responding to the COVID-19 virus, which originated in China.” The top spy office, led by Richard Grenell, the acting head of ODNI and the current ambassador to Germany, added that “the Intelligence Community also concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified.”
The statement also said the spy community had not yet reached a conclusion on whether the coronavirus originated in a wet market or through an inadvertent infection or an accidental escape from the Wuhan Institute of Virology or another nearby lab, but that it would “continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence.”
The rare statement came after the New York Times reported senior Trump administration officials have pushed spy agencies to investigate whether the coronavirus originated in a Wuhan lab. The piece cited unnamed intelligence analysts who are “concerned that the pressure from administration officials will distort assessments about the virus and that they could be used as a political weapon in an intensifying battle with China.” The article said, “[M]ost intelligence agencies remain skeptical that conclusive evidence of a link to a lab can be found.”
An Intelligence Community official told the Washington Examiner last week, “We are actively and vigorously tracking down every piece of information we get on this topic, and we are writing frequently to update policymakers.” The official also noted that “the IC has not collectively agreed on any one theory.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confirmed the U.S. government was taking seriously the possibility that the coronavirus escaped from a Wuhan lab during a recent interview on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show. “Most importantly,” he said, the Chinese Communist Party has not permitted the world’s scientists to go into the Wuhan Institute of Virology to “evaluate what took place there, what’s happening there even as we speak.”
There is well-documented evidence that China tried to cover up the spread of the coronavirus, muzzle whistleblowers, intimidate doctors, mislead the WHO, and block outside health experts. At least one study indicated that if the Chinese government had acted more quickly, the coronavirus’s global spread would have been greatly reduced.
Reports show Chinese doctors knew around late December and early January that human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus was almost certainly occurring, and the Chinese government silenced medical professionals who attempted to go public. The WHO tweeted on Jan. 14 that “preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission.”
The U.S. Intelligence Community reportedly believes the Chinese Communist Party downplayed the severity of the initial coronavirus outbreak and that China continues to mislead about the infection rate and death toll inside the country. Beijing has denied orchestrating a cover-up of its coronavirus response.
