CIA now supports lab leak theory to explain origins of Covid-19 | health
The CIA now believes the virus responsible for the coronavirus pandemic likely originated from a laboratory, according to an assessment released Saturday that points to China even as it acknowledges that the spy agency has “low confidence” on its own end.
The finding is not the result of any new intelligence, and the report was completed at the request of the Biden administration and former CIA Director William Burns. It was declassified and released on Saturday on the orders of President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the agency, John Ratcliffe, who was sworn in as director on Thursday.
A rigorous finding indicates that the agency believes that the totality of the evidence makes laboratory origin more likely than natural origin. But the agency’s assessment, suggesting that the evidence is incomplete, inconclusive or contradictory.
Previous reports on the origins of Covid-19 have been divided over whether the coronavirus emerged from a Chinese laboratory, perhaps accidentally, or whether it arises naturally. The new assessment is unlikely to settle the debate. In fact, intelligence officials say it may never be solved, due to a lack of cooperation from Chinese authorities.
The agency wrote in a statement about its new assessment.
Instead of new evidence, the conclusion was based on new analyzes of intelligence about the spread of the virus, its scientific characteristics, and the work and conditions of virology laboratories in China.
Lawmakers have pressed US spy agencies for more information about the origins of the virus, leading to lockdowns, economic disruption and millions of deaths. It’s a question with major domestic and geopolitical implications as the world continues to grapple with the legacy of the pandemic.
Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Saturday that he was “pleased to the CIA in the final days of the Biden administration that the lab leak theory is the most plausible explanation” and for which Ratcliffe had made the assessment confidential.
“Now, the most important thing is to make China pay for releasing plague into the world,” Cotton said in a statement.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately return messages seeking comment. Chinese authorities have in the past dismissed speculation about the origins of Covid as unhelpful and politically driven.
While the origin of the virus remains unknown, scientists believe the most likely hypothesis is that it was distributed in bats, like many coronaviruses, before infecting another species, most likely raccoon dogs, bobcats, or bamboo rats. In turn, the infection spread to humans handling those animals or slaughtering them at a market in Wuhan, where the first human cases appeared in late November 2019.
However, some official investigations have raised the question of whether the virus escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan. Two years ago, a Department of Energy report concluded that a laboratory leak was the most likely origin, although that report expressed low confidence in that finding.
That same year, FBI Director Christopher Wray said his agency believed the virus “most likely” spread after an escape from a laboratory.
Ratcliffe, who served as director of national intelligence during Trump’s first term, said he favored a lab leak scenario as well.
“The lab leak is the only theory supported by science, intelligence and common sense,” Ratcliffe said in 2023.
The CIA said it would continue to evaluate any new information that could change its assessment.