The CIA now leans towards lab leak theory for COVID origins

Washington: The CIA now believes the virus responsible for the COVID pandemic most likely originated in a laboratory, according to an assessment released on Saturday that points the finger at China while acknowledging that the spy agency has “low confidence” in its own conclusion.

The finding is not the result of any new intelligence, and the report was completed at the behest of the Biden administration and former CIA Director William Burns.

It was declassified and released Saturday on the orders of President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the agency, John Ratcliffe, who was sworn in on Thursday as director.

Medical staff working in the negative-pressure isolation ward in Jinyintan Hospital, designated for critical COVID-19 patients, in Wuhan, in February 2020. Credit: Getty Images

The nuanced finding suggests the agency believes the totality of evidence makes a lab origin more likely than a natural origin. However, the agency’s assessment assigns a low degree of confidence to this conclusion, suggesting the evidence is deficient, inconclusive or contradictory.

Earlier reports on the origins of COVID have split over whether the coronavirus emerged from a Chinese lab, potentially by mistake, or whether it arose naturally. The new assessment is not likely to settle the debate. Intelligence officials say it may never be resolved due to a lack of cooperation from Chinese authorities.

The CIA “continues to assess that both research-related and natural origin scenarios of the COVID-19 pandemic remain plausible”, the agency wrote in a statement.

Instead of new evidence, the conclusion was based on fresh analyses of intelligence about the spread of the virus, its scientific properties and the work and conditions of China’s virology labs.

Security personnel keep watch outside Wuhan Institute of Virology during the 2021 visit by the World Health Organization (WHO) team tasked with investigating the origins of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19).Credit: Reuters

Politicians have pressured America’s spy agencies for more information about the origins of the virus, which led to lockdowns, economic upheaval and millions of deaths. It’s a question with significant domestic and geopolitical implications as the world grapples with the pandemic’s legacy.

Republican senator Tom Cotton, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on Saturday he was “pleased the CIA concluded in the final days of the Biden administration that the lab-leak theory is the most plausible explanation”, and commended Ratcliffe for declassifying the assessment.

“Now, the most important thing is to make China pay for unleashing a plague on the world,” Cotton said.

China’s embassy in Washington did not immediately return messages seeking comment. Chinese authorities have in the past dismissed speculation about COVID’s origins as motivated by politics.

While the origin of the virus remains unknown, scientists think the most likely hypothesis is that it circulated in bats, like many coronaviruses, before infecting another species, probably racoon dogs, civet cats or bamboo rats.

The infection then spread to humans at a market in Wuhan, China, where the first human cases appeared in late November 2019.

Some official investigations have questioned whether the virus escaped from a lab in Wuhan. Two years ago, a report by the Energy Department concluded a lab leak was the most likely origin, though that report also expressed low confidence in the finding.

The same year, then-FBI Director Christopher Wray said his agency believed the virus “most likely” spread after escaping from a lab.

Ratcliffe, who was director of national intelligence during Trump’s first term, has said he favours the lab leak scenario.

“The lab leak is the only theory supported by science, intelligence, and common sense,” Ratcliffe said in 2023.

The document was released as China’s veteran foreign minister issued a veiled warning to America’s new secretary of state.

Marco Rubio at his confirmation hearing last week.Credit: AP

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi conveyed the message in a phone call on Friday, their first conversation since Marco Rubio’s confirmation as Trump’s top diplomat four days earlier.

“I hope you will act accordingly,” Wang told Rubio, according to a Foreign Ministry statement, employing a Chinese phrase typically used by a teacher or a boss warning a student or employee to behave and be responsible for their actions.

The short phrase seemed aimed at Rubio’s vocal criticism of China when he was a US senator, prompting the Chinese government to put sanctions on him twice in 2020.

It can be translated in various ways — in the past, the Foreign Ministry has used “make the right choice” and “be very prudent about what they say or do” rather than “act accordingly.”

Rubio, during his confirmation hearing, cited the importance of referring to the original Chinese to understand the words of China’s leader Xi Jinping.

“Don’t read the English translation that they put out because the English translation is never right,” he said.

A US statement on the phone call didn’t mention the phrase. It said Rubio told Wang that the Trump administration would advance US interests in its relationship with China and expressed “serious concern over China’s coercive actions against Taiwan and in the South China Sea”.

AP

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.