The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) now believes that the COVID-19 virus originated from a lab in China, The New York Times reported on Saturday.
Five years after Chinese authorities first confirmed a novel coronavirus was spreading in Wuhan, China, the CIA has made the determination with “low confidence” that the pandemic began at one of the city’s research labs, The New York Times reported. Three intelligence community elements now assess the pandemic began with a lab accident, a hypothesis once deemed a conspiracy theory by some and subject to censorship on social media. The CIA joins the Department of Energy, which determined the pandemic had a lab origin with low confidence, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which assessed a lab origin with moderate confidence.
The National Intelligence Council and four intelligence community elements determined the pandemic had a natural origin, while one other remaining intelligence community element remains undecided.
The news follows the Senate confirmation of CIA Director John Ratcliffe Thursday. Ratcliffe, who served as the Director of National Intelligence from 2020-2021, has long stated publicly that the classified intelligence implicates Wuhan’s labs. Ratcliffe has also claimed the CIA has dithered in its public assessment due to political concerns.
“My informed assessment, as a person with as much or more access than anyone to our government’s intelligence during the initial year of the virus outbreak and pandemic onset, has been and continues to be that a lab leak is the only explanation credibly supported by our intelligence, by science and by common sense,” Ratcliffe testified to the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in 2023. “In fact, were this a trial, the preponderance of circumstantial evidence provided by our intelligence would compel a jury finding of guilt to an accusation that the coronavirus research in the Wuhan labs was responsible for spawning a global pandemic.”
According to The New York Times report, the new conclusion is informed by a second look at the conditions of the labs in Wuhan. However, no new materials are available for public inspection.
The revelation follows news that outgoing National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan tasked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence with assembling a panel to take a renewed look at the pandemic’s origins. The 11th hour move was reminiscent of when a cadre of experts within the State Department released a fact sheet with declassified intelligence surrounding the Wuhan Institute of Virology during the waning days of the first Trump administration despite internal resistance to their investigation.
Ratcliffe has expressed concern about politicization within the intelligence community regarding China and COVID-19, particularly within the CIA.
“When we pushed to declassify intelligence exposing some of what the U.S. government knew about the virus’s origins and the Communist Party’s initial coverup, we faced constant opposition, particularly from Langley,” Ratcliffe wrote in a 2023 op-ed. “When preparing the President’s Daily Brief, it wasn’t unusual to ask why the CIA’s China assessments seemed at odds with intelligence from the other 17 U.S. spy agencies.”
It remains to be seen whether Ratcliffe will continue to push for the declassification of this intelligence in his new role.
Others have expressed concerns about the impartiality and rigor of the intelligence community’s assessments, including the worry that virologists with undisclosed biases have shaped the intelligence community’s view.
In a November 2024 letter, Republican Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas raised the alarm that a close collaborator of the Wuhan Institute of Virology may have shaped the intelligence community’s understanding of the issue. The ODNI consults with the Biological Sciences Experts Group, a group of nongovernmental scientists which advises on biosecurity issues. University of North Carolina virologist Ralph Baric — who worked on coronavirus engineering projects with the Wuhan Institute of Virology — is affiliated with the group, according to the letter.
Records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by U.S. Right to Know in 2023 showed Scripps Institute virologist Kristian Andersen, who communicated with National Institutes of Health leaders in the early pandemic about a prominent scientific article that would dismiss the lab leak theory, briefed State Department analysts in March 2020.
The Defense Intelligence Agency Office of the Inspector General has opened an inquiry into whether an assessment by scientists at the National Center for Medical Intelligence was improperly excluded from the president’s brief, according to a December Wall Street Journal report.
The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic sent letters to the CIA in September 2023 revealing whistleblower testimony alleging the CIA analysts who assessed the pandemic’s origin were compelled to change their conclusion from a lab origin to undecided through a “monetary incentive.” But the committee’s final report did not include any further information about this line of inquiry.
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