After director change, CIA names lab leak as most likely source of COVID-19 outbreak
On Saturday, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) offered a new assessment of the origin of the COVID-19 outbreak, saying the coronavirus is "more likely" to have leaked from a Chinese laboratory than to have originated in animals.
This is reported by the BBC.
Thus, the US intelligence agency warned that it had "low confidence" in this conclusion.
A spokesman for the agency said that the "research-related" origin of the pandemic "is more likely than natural, based on available reports."
It is noted that the decision to publish this assessment was one of the first made by the new CIA director, John Ratcliffe, appointed by Donald Trump.
Ratcliffe, who served as director of national intelligence during President Trump’s first term, has long championed the lab leak theory, arguing that COVID-19 likely emerged from a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a 40-minute drive from the Huanan market where the first cluster of infections emerged.
In an interview with Breitbart News published Friday, Ratcliffe said he wants the CIA to abandon its neutral stance on the origins of the virus and “step aside.”
“One of the things I’ve talked about a lot is dealing with the threat from China on multiple fronts, and that gets us back to why a million Americans died and why the CIA sat on the sidelines for five years without assessing the origins of COVID. That’s a day one question for me,” he said.
At the same time, officials told US media that the new assessment is not based on new intelligence and was done before the Trump administration came to power. The review was reportedly ordered in the final weeks of the Biden administration, which ordered an additional review in the final weeks of his administration.
The review, proposed on Saturday, is reportedly based on “low confidence,” meaning that the intelligence supporting it is insufficient, inconclusive or contradictory.
There is currently no consensus on the cause of the Covid pandemic. The hypothesis that the virus leaked from a laboratory is hotly contested by scientists, many of whom say there is no credible evidence to support it. And China has in the past dismissed the lab accusations as “political manipulation” by Washington.
At the same time, the theory is gaining traction among some intelligence agencies. In 2023, FBI Director Christopher Wray stated that, in his bureau's assessment, "the origins of the pandemic are most likely related to a potential laboratory incident."