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A new U.S. Department of Energy intelligence report that reportedly concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic may have resulted from an accidental leak from a lab in China raises questions again about where the virus came from.
But the report, which was not made public but was the subject of numerous US media reports, also further highlighted the ongoing split in the US intelligence community and elsewhere over the origins of the pandemic, a view echoed by the White House on Monday. .
“There is currently no consensus within the US government on exactly how COVID started,” said John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council. “There is simply no consensus in the intelligence community.”
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The report’s findings differ from those of other intelligence agencies, which are also inconclusive, that the virus was transmitted from animal to human in nature, like previous coronaviruses. These conclusions were also voiced by the Chinese Foreign Ministry in response to the report of the Ministry of Energy.
“Some parties should stop rehashing the ‘lab leak’ narrative, stop slandering China and stop politicizing origin tracing,” Mao Ning’s spokesman told reporters on Monday, according to the translated transcript.
Here’s what the media is saying about the new report, why the Department of Energy is investigating the origins of COVID-19 at all, and what could happen next.
What does the report say?
As first reported by the Wall Street Journal over the weekend and later confirmed by CNN, the New York Times and others, the Department of Energy’s Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence has concluded with “low confidence” that the virus likely originated in a Chinese lab.
This conclusion is consistent with the enduring theory that the virus, first detected in Wuhan, China, leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a leading coronavirus research center.
The agency’s conclusion was based on new intelligence, details of which officials, who anonymously discussed the report with US media, declined to disclose.
The new report does not appear to suggest that the lab leaked the virus on purpose or that COVID-19 was being developed as some sort of bioweapon.
Rather, according to officials cited in media reports, he concluded that the virus likely infected the researcher, who then spread it outside the lab.
Why would the Department of Energy be investigating COVID-19?
The Department of Energy’s Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence is one of 18 agencies in the US national intelligence community.
In addition, in addition to its responsibilities on key national security issues such as atomic and nuclear energy, the agency also oversees the country’s network of national laboratories, some of which conduct biological research, such as the laboratory in Wuhan.
“It’s a big agency with big national security responsibilities, so it makes sense that it has an intelligence arm,” said Timothy Sale, a professor at the University of Toronto whose research includes government intelligence gathering.
“If you’re thinking about what’s called the ‘lab leak hypothesis’, I think it also makes sense to hear from the people who are in charge of the labs.”
But the Department of Energy’s definition that the estimate was made with “low confidence” has raised further questions about what that means.
The U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence defines a “low confidence” rating as one where “the information used in the analysis is sparse, questionable, fragmentary” or otherwise not sufficiently reliable to warrant a definitive conclusion.
Sale says the Department of Energy may have based its report more on analyzes from its own labs and “what is plausible” than on hard evidence found in Wuhan.
What did other agencies say?
The Department of Energy’s conclusion comes after President Joe Biden ordered a nationwide inquiry into the causes of the pandemic in May 2021.
A declassified 2021 intelligence community report from that review said four agencies assessed with low confidence that the virus most likely crossed from animals to humans.
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However, the fifth agency said it had “moderate confidence” in the lab leak theory. While no specific agencies were named in the declassified report, the Wall Street Journal and New York Times reported that the pro-lab agency was the FBI.
The other three agencies were unable to say they trusted any explanation without more information.
In 2021, a joint study by China and the World Health Organization all but ruled out the theory that COVID-19 originated in a laboratory.
However, the WHO has since demanded more information from Beijing and suggested that a team of experts sent to China for a preliminary investigation was blocked by Chinese officials, who limited the publication of data about the possibility of a leak from the laboratory.
China denies such accusations and insists that it has always cooperated with investigators on the origin of the pandemic.
Meanwhile, the scientific community largely supports the theory of natural origin. Two studies published last year in the journal Science found that the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was likely an early epicenter where the virus was likely to be transmitted from animals to humans twice in late 2019.
What is the political reaction?
Republicans in the US have long argued that a lab leak is the more likely source of COVID-19, accusing China of covering up information with the help of pro-Chinese figures in Washington and even the WHO.
A 2021 report by Republicans to the House Foreign Relations Committee and a similar Republican Senate report last year concluded that the accidental leak from the lab was “confirmed.” Both reports cited circumstantial evidence from public records of the Wuhan lab’s activities and other factors.
“While I wish it had happened sooner, I’m glad the Department of Energy has finally come to the same conclusion I’ve already reached,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCall said Sunday, urging the Biden administration do the same and brief Congress on the evidence for a new report.
A new Republican-led subcommittee investigating the COVID-19 pandemic and the US government’s response said earlier this month that it was seeking information, including from Dr. Anthony Fauci, regarding the idea that the virus accidentally leaked from a Chinese lab. The committee’s letter is also addressed to Director of National Intelligence Avril Hein and other administration officials.
Rep. James Comer, a Kentucky Republican who chairs the House Oversight Committee, said Republicans will “follow the facts” and “hold U.S. government officials involved in any cover-up accountable.”
Republicans accused Fauci of lying to Congress when he denied in May that the National Institutes of Health had funded a study on “amplification of function” — the practice of improving a virus in a lab to study its potential impact on the real world — at the Wuhan Virology Laboratory. . labs, suggesting that the funding would make the US complicit in the pandemic, if that turns out to be true.
Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, stressed that President Biden thinks it’s important to know what happened “so we can better prevent future pandemics,” but that such research “should be done in a safe and secure manner and as transparently as possible.” others.” world.”
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