Scrutiny of the inscrutable remains

A staff member sprays disinfectant at a primary school in Wuhan. Picture: AFP

The intelligence community that relied on compromised Wuhan Institute of Virology collaborators for scientific advice concluded a laboratory leak was a plausible ­explanation for how Covid-19 began.

Not only that, but even the ­intelligence agencies that leant towards a natural zoonotic origin for the pandemic did so with “low confidence”.

“After examining all intelligence reporting and other information … the IC remains divided on the most likely origin of Covid-19,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said. “All agencies assess two ­hypo­theses are plausible: natural exposure to an infected animal and a laboratory-associated incident.”

For all the efforts of the 18 ­intelligence agencies, with their ­billion-dollar budgets, we are no closer to understanding why a virus that has claimed four million lives came to pass.

Joe Biden’s probe has not­ ­advanced our knowledge of its ­origins in any meaningful way.

A very senior Five Eyes intelligence source told me of this 90-day probe that the problem was not with the intelligence collection – there is plenty of it, including intercepts, signals intelligence and human sources – the problem lies with the analysis. This source said there was ample circumstantial evidence supporting a laboratory leak while there was no intelligence pointing to Covid-19 arising from an infected animal. That’s right: no intelligence.

Yet vast sections of the intelligence community ultimately view the origins issue as inconclusive because the evidence, while all on the lab-leak side of the ledger, is circumstantial.

One conclusion some intelligence agencies reached is truly absurd. “Most agencies also assess with low confidence that SARS-CoV-2 probably was not genetically engineered; however, two agencies believe there was not sufficient evidence to make an ­assessment either way.”

Numerous scientists have expressed concern about the highly unusual features of SARS-CoV-2 that indicate it may have been subject to genetic manipulation.

These include its furin cleavage site – never before seen in beta-coronaviruses and responsible for making Covid-19 so infectious – at a particular location of the virus where scientists often tinker with the genome. More important than this is the fact it is impossible to ascertain whether a virus has been subject to laboratory manipulation.

This is a point Ralph Baric ­admits. And he should know. The vir­ologist at the University of North Carolina conducted a controversial gain of function experiment with so-called “batlady” Shi Zhengli in 2015. “You can engineer a virus without leaving a trace,” he told Italy’s national broadcaster last year.

Can US intelligence analysts be so ill-informed and ignorant as to assess, albeit with low confidence, that SARS-CoV-2 was probably not genetically altered?

Perhaps this comes back to the scientists on whom the agencies have been relying for technical understanding of coronaviruses.

Wuhan collaborator EcoHealth Alliance’s Peter Daszak was among those invited to brief intelligence officials at a National Academies of Sciences meeting on February 3, 2020.

This is the same scientist who has worked with Shi Zhengli for 15 years and failed to ask the Wuhan institute of Virology for access to its deleted virus database when he visited the city as part of the World Health Organisation Covid origins mission.

A source involved in the Covid-19 investigation inside the State Department told me Don­ald Trump’s enthusiasm for the lab-leak theory during an election year infected the way the intelligence community treated this issue. “The narrative that developed is this was a conspiracy and crazy,” he said. “The bias exists.”

That bias makes the findings of the intelligence probe even more extraordinary. From this point, no one can claim the virus most likely emerged in a wet market or by an infected bat. The scrutiny on the Wuhan labs is far from over.