Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free
Your guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the world
The CIA concluded that Covid-19 likely began as a leak from a laboratory in China in a new assessment of the origins of the pandemic that killed millions of people.
US intelligence said it had concluded with “low confidence” that the Covid-19 virus had leaked from the research facility, changing its previous position that there was not enough information to reach a conclusion reach.
“The CIA believes, based on available reporting, with low certainty, that a research-related origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely than a natural origin,” the agency said in a statement Saturday.
“The CIA continues to believe that both research and natural origin scenarios of the COVID-19 pandemic remain plausible.”
The U.S. Secret Service, made up of 18 agencies, has been investigating the origins of Covid-19 for four years to determine whether the virus originated naturally from a wet market in Wuhan or whether it was leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in the Chinese city.
The CIA joins the FBI and the Energy Department in concluding that the virus came from the Wuhan lab. However, she said she has “low confidence in this judgment” and will “continue to evaluate any available credible new intelligence reports or open source information” that could change her assessment.
The new assessment was released just days after John Ratcliffe was sworn in as CIA director.
In an interview with Breitbart News after being confirmed as President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the intelligence agency, Ratcliffe said he believes intelligence and common sense “dictate that the origin of Covid was a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” “was” and would ensure that “the public is aware that the agency (CIA) will disappear from the sidelines”.
A US official said Bill Burns, CIA chief during the Biden administration, told the CIA team evaluating the evidence to take a position on the origin of Covid-19 but did not dictate the outcome.
Burns’ order came as Jake Sullivan, who served as national security adviser, ordered the intelligence community to revisit the origins of the pandemic as the Biden team prepared to leave office.
The US official stressed that the CIA revised its assessment before Ratcliffe was sworn in as the new director.
“I have said from the beginning that Covid probably came from the Wuhan laboratories. Communist China covered it up and the liberal media reported it, said Tom Cotton, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
“I am pleased that the CIA concluded in the final days of the Biden administration that the lab leak theory is the most plausible explanation for the emergence of Covid, and I commend Director Ratcliffe for fulfilling his promise to support this conclusion “The most important thing now is to make China pay for bringing a plague to the world.”
The Chinese Embassy in the United States did not respond to a request for comment.
The new change in CIA assessment comes just over a week after Trump had his first phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping since at least 2021. While many foreign policy experts expected Trump to take a tough line on China in his first phone call – particularly on trade – the president has held off on taking tough measures against Beijing so far in his week in office.
In an interview with Fox News this week, Trump said that while the tariffs gave him “tremendous power” over China, he would “prefer not to use it.”
He also signed an executive order pushing back the deadline for TikTok’s Chinese owner to divest the popular video app to avoid a ban in the United States.
