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Members of the U.S. intelligence community who believed that the coronavirus may have originated from a lab leak in China were blocked from sharing their opinions and research with the broader intel community, according to sources inside the FBI and other government officials familiar with the Biden administration’s internal efforts during the pandemic.
In the first few months after COVID arrived in the U.S., the prevailing view within the Biden administration was that COVID-19 most likely originated organically in Wuhan, China, and was transferred to humans from infected animals. They said this was potentially due to the country’s under-regulated and extensive wildlife trade. This viewpoint was opposed by a much smaller group within the intel community, who believed a purposeful or accidental lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the likely cause of the outbreak.
Now, it has come to light in a new Wall Street Journal report that some of those officials who believed in the likelihood of a COVID-19 lab-leak theory were reportedly blocked by the Biden administration from sharing their viewpoints with the president and other intelligence community leaders.
Early in Joe Biden’s presidency, he tasked the U.S. intelligence community with preparing a report on their most updated analysis on the origins of the coronavirus. The report came amid China’s blocking of U.S. officials’ access to the Wuhan Institute, preventing them from adequately studying the virus’ origins.
At the time, the FBI was the only government agency concluding that a lab leak origin theory was most likely.
Yet, according to FBI senior scientist Jason Bannan, who was tasked with helping lead the agency’s investigation into COVID-19’s origins, neither he nor any of his agency counterparts were invited to share their assessment during an August 2021 briefing with the president, led by the White House’s National Intelligence Council, that sought to share the intel community’s position on natural versus artificial origins of COVID-19.
“Being the only agency that assessed that a laboratory origin was more likely, and the agency that expressed the highest level of confidence in its analysis of the source of the pandemic, we anticipated the FBI would be asked to attend the briefing,” Bannan told the Wall Street Journal. “I find it surprising that the White House didn’t ask.”
Additionally, according to sources familiar with the matter, three scientists at the National Center for Medical Intelligence, a sub-agency within the Department of Defense’s Defense Intelligence Agency, were also blocked from sharing their research that concluded the coronavirus originated from a lab leak. Ultimately, a Defense Intelligence Agency Inspector General report was commissioned to find out whether the three scientists’ assessment was suppressed.
A spokesperson for the ODNI declined to comment on the report, which has yet to be released.
FAUCI DENIES SEEKING TO SUPPRESS COVID-19 LAB LEAK ORIGIN THEORY
The three scientists at the National Center for Medical Intelligence, John Hardham, Robert Cutlip and Jean-Paul Chretien, argued that evidence they found had shown that Chinese scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were conducting dangerous “gain-of-function” research. In turn, the trio informed their counterparts, including someone at the FBI on Bannan’s team, about their findings. However, in July 2021, the three scientists were told by their superiors to halt any continued sharing of their work with people at the FBI, which they were told was “off the reservation,” the Wall Street Journal reported.
In response to the assertions made in the Wall Street Journal’s report, a spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said that the intelligence community-wide assessment of the origins of COVID-19 included input “from across the community on the two main hypotheses of the origins of the pandemic in line with all of the Intelligence Community’s analytic standards, including objectivity.”
The spokesperson added that efforts were made to ensure that both of these viewpoints were included in the intelligence assessment, in line with the “standard process” for typical coordination of a National Intelligence Council assessment.