Another Government Agency Now Says COVID Likely Leaked From Lab: REPORT

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.”