CIA ‘covered up’ Covid lab leak finding: Whistleblower

The Central Intelligence Agency ‘bribed’ its own spies to bury findings COVID-19 likely leaked from China’s Wuhan virus lab, according to bombshell testimony. Read the full claim.

The United States’ top spy agency was accused of bribing its own analysts to cover up findings the Covid-19 pandemic likely started from a lab leak in Wuhan, China.

The bombshell whistleblower testimony to Congress alleged the Central Intelligence Agency offered analysts a “significant monetary incentive to change their position” of SARS-CoV-2 likely leaking from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The allegations were contained in a letter sent to CIA Director William Burns from the US Congress’s Select Subcommittee on the coronavirus Pandemic.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology, where six out of seven CIA analysts believe the Covid-19 virus originated. Picture: REUTERS

House panel chairman Brad Wenstrup, and Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner, wrote that a senior-level CIA officer claimed that the agency’s leadership attempted to bribe six analysts who found Covid leaked from a lab.

The seventh analyst on the team believed Covid evolved naturally, but the CIA ultimately made no assessment of the pandemic’s origin as part of a US intelligence agency review of the evidence. The FBI was the first to propose a lab leak.

“According to the whistleblower, at the end of its review, six of the seven members of the Team believed the intelligence and science were sufficient to make a low confidence assessment that COVID-19 originated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China,” the House panel chairmen wrote.

Virologist Shi Zheng-li, nicknamed ‘bat woman’ works with her colleague in the P4 lab of Wuhan Institute of Virology. Picture: Getty Images

“The whistleblower further contends that to come to the eventual public determination of uncertainty, the other six members were given a significant monetary incentive to change their position,” they said, noting that the analysts were “experienced officers with significant scientific expertise.”

As part of their letter to the CIA director, the committee demanded documents and communications between federal agencies that made assessments on the virus origin as part of the Covid Discovery Team, including the State Department, the FBI, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Energy Department.

The FBI has included with “moderate confidence” that Covid leaked from a Chinese biological research lab, while the US Department of Energy reached the same conclusion but with “low confidence”. The five other agencies concluded that the virus came from natural transmission, likely jumping from an animal to a human.

Describing the whistleblower as a “multi-decade, senior-level, current Agency officer”, the letter says the allegations are made from a credible source and threatened “additional tools and authorities”, such as its subpoena power, if the documents were not provided voluntarily.

The CIA has until September 26 to turn over all records related to its assessment of the origin of Covid-19.

Originally published as CIA ‘covered up’ Covid lab leak finding: Whistleblower