Senior Biden Officials Find Covid Lab Leak Theory As Credible As Explanation Of Natural Origins

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Current intelligence reinforces the belief that the virus most likely originated in nature, from animal-human contact, and was not deliberately engineered, the sources said. But that doesn’t rule out the possibility that the virus was the result of an accidental leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where coronavirus research was being carried out on bats – although many scientists familiar with the research say such a leak is unlikely.

Also on Thursday, the spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying that “since the start of the epidemic, China has adopted a scientific, professional, serious and responsible attitude in tracing the origins of the virus.”

As more and more US officials see the laboratory leak theory as credible, their tone towards Beijing has also become firmer. Days after Biden announced the renewal of the investigation, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that the administration had pressured Chinese officials through diplomatic channels to allow investigators international organizations to have full access to the data collected by China at the start of the epidemic.

For their part, scientists who found strong genetic evidence that the virus originated from an animal say they would also like to have access to what China knows about the beginnings of the pandemic, saying they cannot make a case. their cause without having access to early samples.

However, as the review progressed, the White House also began to make public threats.

U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan speaks during a press briefing on February 4, 2021.
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan warned Beijing of the potential consequences last month, telling Fox News that China would face “isolation within the international community” if it does not cooperate with the investigations. to come up. He told CNN’s State of the Union the same day that “if it turns out that China is refusing to honor its international obligations, we will have to think about our responses at this point.”

A source familiar with the ongoing review said several senior administration officials, including Sullivan, viewed the accidental lab leak theory as just as plausible as the theory of natural origins. Intelligence agencies that were skeptical of the laboratory leak theory a year ago, such as the CIA, now also see it as a credible avenue of investigation, the person said.

“There has been a change in their perspective,” the person added.

But officials stressed that no conclusions were drawn, and Sullivan was very careful in reserving judgment until the review was completed.

“Key intelligence needs”

While many individual officials have their own personal views as to the likely origin of the pandemic, some find the laboratory leak theory more credible than others as they continue to receive and interpret information, people familiar with the investigation said no one responsible is driving the pace or direction of the overall review.

Politicians have sought to give the intelligence community and national labs wide latitude to complete the review without dictating their conclusions, and U.S. officials say CIA Director Bill Burns, National Intelligence Director Avril Haines and other senior intelligence officials receive regular updates on progress. .

A note distributed to the intelligence community on June 11 by the office of the director of national intelligence, and obtained exclusively by CNN, instructed officials to obtain more data on the theories of animal and laboratory leaks, citing “key intelligence needs” that could help determine the origins of the virus.

The note called for further consideration of several topics, including any “detection of the virus in wild or domestic animals,” “the extent of high-risk activities of Chinese and regional wildlife,” any virus that “could be of use. spine for genetic engineering purposes ”and“ the extent of Chinese biological research and related activities ”.

The memo also called on the intelligence community to study “the extent of Chinese actions that may have inhibited investigations by the World Health Organization or other sources.”

The Intel community still divided

The intelligence community also consulted with outside experts and examined raw information that might have been missed – including information the State Department had gathered in the Trump administration – and analyzed more open information, such as studies. peer-reviewed in China, a source with knowledge of the probe said.

People familiar with the progress of the review, however, said the intelligence community as a whole is still roughly in the same place it was when Biden ordered his review in late May: two agencies assess with confidence weak to moderate that the virus is of natural origin, while we assess with the same lukewarm confidence that it escaped a laboratory.

In an interview with CNN, Bill Evanina, the top counterintelligence official under President Donald Trump, said that initially the intelligence community did not prioritize determining the origins of Covid like it did. does it now with the 90 day review.

“The identification of the origins of the pandemic has probably not reached a level of weapons of mass destruction, nor the identification of the plans and intentions of foreign leaders,” Evanina said.

Person familiar with the investigation said there would likely be no definitive answer as to the origins of Covid by the end of the 90-day review – instead, any final assessment will likely expose both theories and assess their advantages and disadvantages. The source said relations with China are too delicate to endorse one theory over another without glaring evidence, which currently does not exist.

“Listening to analysts, I really understand why they perceive these two theories to be in competition, and why it is very difficult for them to assess one against the other,” said Haines, the chief intelligence officer. national. director, said Yahoo! News at the end of June.

When asked directly if she had any idea of ​​the most plausible competing possibility, she replied, “I don’t.”

Gain traction

For most of 2020, supporters of the lab leak theory had to grapple with claims they were xenophobic or racist – in part thanks to the anti-China rhetoric of President Trump, who embraced the theory. An investigation launched last fall by Trump’s State Department, which sought to determine whether China’s biological weapons program could have played a larger role in causing the pandemic in Wuhan, has been shut down at the start of the Biden administration.
Residents walk past a closed Huanan seafood market on February 9, 2021 in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China.

An open letter published in February 2020 in the Lancet, an influential scientific journal, also set the tone very early by declaring that the virus had a natural origin.

But the theory of laboratory leaks has gained popularity in recent months, especially following reports that the intelligence community found evidence that researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology have fallen seriously ill with a mysterious virus in November 2019 – although it is not clear if they have contracted Covid -19 and no other evidence has emerged to corroborate this report.
The existence of another classified report released last year by researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which concluded that it was possible that Covid-19 may have leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, has also become public.

Popular opinion has also changed.

A POLITICO-Harvard poll conducted earlier this month found that 52% of American adults now believe Covid-19 has leaked from a lab, up from 29% in March 2020.

“The growing public discourse has sharpened the [Science] the Committee’s attention on several matters falling within our jurisdictional mandate, ”said an aide to the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, one of the few panels on Capitol Hill that is currently actively investigating the question.

The search for evidence

For now, sources say, both theories lack definitive evidence and officials say we may never know the truth.

“We’re hoping to find a smoking gun, but that might not happen,” Haines told Yahoo.

In the past, pandemics have emerged from natural transmission from animals, known as zoonotic transmission, and it often takes months or years to find out which host the virus has passed through as it passes. adapted to infect humans. In some cases, as in the case of Ebola, the original natural source has never been identified. It took years to find proof that an animal called civet was the source of the 2003-2004 SARS epidemic. Despite testing thousands of animals, the host for SARS-CoV-2 has yet to be found – but scientists say China is not giving them the access they need to find the source.

But there’s also no smoking gun for the lab leak theory, according to multiple sources.

Yet the renewed recognition of the laboratory leak theory, coupled with a fierce political interest in Capitol Hill, spawned a number of Congressional inquiries that advocates say have developed new evidence.

Representative Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, plans to release a report on the origins of Covid-19 at the end of this month that pulls together an account of the laboratory leak theory and makes “A pretty declarative statement”, according to a congressional assistant.

“I believe we have found the answer to the question,” McCaul proclaimed at a recent GOP hearing on the origins of the pandemic.

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