Global Courant
WASHINGTON — US officials released an intelligence report on Friday that rejected some points made by those who claim COVID-19 leaked from a Chinese lab, instead reiterating that US intelligence agencies remain divided over how the pandemic started.
The report was commissioned by Congress, which passed a bill in March that gave US intelligence 90 days to release intelligence related to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Intelligence officials under President Joe Biden have been pressured by lawmakers to release more material about the origins of COVID-19. But they have repeatedly argued that China’s official obstruction of independent assessments may have made it impossible to determine how the pandemic started.
The latest report has angered some Republicans, who claim the government was wrongly withholding classified information, and investigators who accuse the US of being unwilling.
John Ratcliffe, who served as director of US national intelligence under former President Donald Trump, accused the Biden administration of “ongoing embezzlement”.
“The lab leak is the only theory supported by science, intelligence and common sense,” Ratcliffe said in a statement.
There was renewed interest from investigators following the revelation earlier this year that the Department of Energy’s intelligence arm had released a report advocating a lab-related incident.
But Friday’s report said the intelligence community has gone no further. Four agencies still believe the virus was transmitted from animals to humans, and two agencies — the Energy Department and the FBI — believe the virus leaked from a lab. The CIA and another agency have not made an assessment.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology, based in the city where the pandemic is believed to have started, has faced intense scrutiny for its previous research on bat coronaviruses and the reported security vulnerabilities.
The lab genetically engineered viruses as part of its research, the report said, including attempts to combine different viruses.
But the report says that U.S. intelligence has “no information, however, to indicate that any WIV genetic engineering work involved SARS-CoV-2, a proximate precursor or a spinal virus closely enough related to identify the source of the pandemic.” have been. .”
And reports from several lab researchers who fell ill with respiratory symptoms in the fall of 2019 are also inconclusive, the report says.
U.S. intelligence, the report said, “continues to assess that this information neither supports nor refutes either hypothesis about the origin of the pandemic, because the researchers’ symptoms could be caused by a number of diseases and some symptoms are not consistent.” were with COVID-19. .”
In response to the report, the Republican chairmen of the House Intelligence Committee and a select subcommittee on the pandemic collectively said they had gathered information in favor of the lab leak hypothesis. Representatives Mike Turner and Brad Wenstrup, both from Ohio, praised the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence for taking a “promising step toward transparency.”
“While we appreciate ODNI’s report, confirmation of all available evidence should continue along with further research into the origins of COVID-19,” said Turner and Wenstrup.
But Alina Chan, a molecular biologist who has long argued that the virus may have originated in the Wuhan lab, noted that the public version of the report did not include names of researchers who fell ill or other details mandated by Congress.
The bill requiring the review allowed intelligence officials to disclose information to protect agency sources and methods.
“It becomes very hard to believe that the government is not trying to hide what they know about #OriginOfCovid when you see a report like this that contains none of the requested information,” Chan tweeted.
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