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Members of the US intelligence community who believed the coronavirus may have originated from a laboratory leak in China were unable to share their views and research with the wider intelligence community. broad, according to FBI sources and other government officials familiar with Biden’s internal administration. efforts during the pandemic.
In the first months after COVID arrived in the US, the prevailing view within the Biden administration was that COVID-19 likely originated organically in Wuhan, China, and was transferred to humans from infected animals. They said this was potentially due to the country’s extensive and unregulated wildlife trade. This view was opposed by a much smaller group within the intellectual community, who believed that an intentional or accidental laboratory leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the likely cause of the outbreak.
Now, it has come to light in a new one Wall Street Journal report that some of the officials who believed in the likelihood of a lab leak theory of COVID-19 were blocked by the Biden administration from sharing their views with the president and others leaders of the intelligence community.
At the beginning Joe Biden’s Presidency, tasked the US intelligence community with preparing a report on its most up-to-date analysis of the origins of the coronavirus. The report came amid China blocking US officials from accessing the Wuhan Institute, preventing them from properly studying the origins of the virus.
Security personnel stand guard outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan as members of the World Health Organization (WHO) team investigating the origins of the coronavirus paid a visit to the Wuhan institute , in central China’s Hubei province, on February 3, 2021. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)
At the time, the FBI was the only government agency to conclude that the lab leak’s theory of origin was more likely.
However, according to F.B.I Senior scientist Jason Bannan, who was tasked with helping lead the agency’s investigation into the origins of COVID-19, neither he nor any of his counterparts at the agency were invited to share their assessment during an August 2021 briefing with the president, led by White House National Intelligence. Council, which sought to share the position of the intellectual community on the natural and man-made origins of COVID-19.
“As the only agency that assessed a laboratory origin as most likely and the agency that expressed the highest level of confidence in its analysis of the origin of the pandemic, we anticipated that the FBI would attend the briefing,” Bannan said. the Wall Street Journal. “I’m surprised the White House isn’t asking.”
Additionally, according to sources familiar with the matter, three scientists at the National Center for Medical Intelligence, a subagency of the Defense Intelligence Agency of the Department of Defense, were also barred from sharing their research that concluded that the coronavirus originated from a laboratory leak. Finally, a report by the inspector general of the Defense Intelligence Agency was commissioned to find out whether the evaluation of the three scientists was suppressed.
Coronavirus molecule, March 24, 2020.
An ODNI spokesman declined to comment on the report, which has not yet been made public.
FAUCI DENIES TRYING TO DELETE THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF THE COVID-19 LAB LEAK
The three scientists at the National Center for Medical Intelligence, John Hardham, Robert Cutlip and Jean-Paul Chretien, argued that the evidence they found had shown that Chinese scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were carrying out a dangerous “gain of function” investigation. In turn, the trio briefed their counterparts, including someone from the FBI on Bannan’s team, about their findings. However, in July 2021, the three scientists were told by their superiors to stop any continued sharing of their work with people at the FBI, which they were told was “off the shelf,” reported the Wall Street Journal.
Virologist Shi Zheng-li, left, works with her colleague in the P4 laboratory of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in Wuhan, central China’s Hubei province, Thursday, Feb. . 23, 2017. (Feature China/Barcroft Studios/Future Publishing)
In response to claims made in the Wall Street Journal report, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said the intelligence community’s assessment of the origins of COVID-19 include input “from the entire community on the two main hypotheses about the origins of the pandemic according to all analytical standards of the intelligence community, including objectivity.”
The spokesman added that efforts were made to ensure that both viewpoints were included in the intelligence assessment, in accordance with the “standard process” for the typical coordination of an assessment by the National Intelligence Council.