{"id":5962,"date":"2021-05-26T13:21:53","date_gmt":"2021-05-26T18:21:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.webfxonline.com\/?p=5962"},"modified":"2021-05-26T14:10:28","modified_gmt":"2021-05-26T19:10:28","slug":"cia-we-cant-rule-out-the-lab-leak-theory-of-covid-19s-origins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.webfxonline.com\/?p=5962","title":{"rendered":"CIA: We Can’t Rule Out the ‘Lab Leak’ Theory of Covid-19’s Origins"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Top U.S. intelligence officials reiterated Thursday that they could not rule out the possibility that covid-19 leaked out of a Chinese government lab, as opposed to originating from animal-to-human transmission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During a House committee hearing on global threats, Director of Intelligence Avril Haines and CIA Director William Burns both stated that the controversial theory of the novel coronavirus\u2019s origin was still being investigated by America\u2019s spy agencies. Officials made similar comments during a Senate hearing Wednesday. In so doing, they refused to swear off the increasingly discussed claim that the virus could have actually escaped from a lab\u2014perhaps the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where Chinese scientists are accused of having conducted military experiments involving coronaviruses and animals. (Foreign diplomats had also previously expressed concerns about the security of this facility.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFrom our perspective, we just don\u2019t know where, when and how the coronavirus was transmitted initially. We have two plausible theories that we\u2019re working on,\u201d said Haines, when questioned about the issue Thursday. \u201cOne of them is that it was a laboratory accident. And the other is that it emerged naturally from human contact with infected animals.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The comments also put intel officials at odds with a recent report from the World Health Organization (WHO), which asserts that the lab leak hypothesis is \u201cextremely unlikely\u201d and that the virus probably originated in livestock farms in southeast Asia. During an exchange Thursday between Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick and Burns, the CIA director said his agency could not endorse the report\u2019s assessment:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BURNS: \u201cI think at this point, as Director Haines said, this is something that we\u2019re still analyzing, with the benefit of all of the various sources that the intelligence community can bring to bear.\u201d<\/p>

FITZPATRICK: \u201cBut, with regard to WHO\u2019s assessment, they\u2019ve obviously come out and said it\u2019s very unlikely. Is that consistent with the intelligence community\u2019s assessment?\u201d<\/p>

BURNS: \u201cI think that is not <\/em>an assessment that we are prepared to make at this point. We are weighing both of the options that Director Haines described.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

When pushed, Haines subsequently reiterated the point: \u201cWe do not make the assessment that the WHO report made\u2014that it is \u201cextremely unlikely\u201d… that is not our assessment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Odd as it may sound, America\u2019s top spies are not alone. The WHO report was recently criticized by the organization\u2019s own director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who said that not enough research had been done on the issue and that \u201cfurther investigation\u201d was required. More recently, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under President Trump, Robert Redfield, said in a CNN interview that he believed the \u201cmost likely etiology\u201d was \u201cfrom a laboratory,\u201d but it\u2019s currently unclear what justifies that more assured assessment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s certainly an intriguing turn of events. While a large aggregate of scientists continue to be critical of this theory, more and more health experts and government officials have begun to question the initial claims about covid-19\u2019s origins (those claims have, of course, shifted over time\u2014and there\u2019s a lot of disagreement in the scientific community on this topic, in general). Now, what was previously considered a conspiracy theory has increasingly become a legitimate (or at least tolerable) line of inquiry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The U.S. intelligence community has been one of the most consistently ambivalent voices on this issue. Last April, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence made the unusual announcement that it was investigating the \u201clab leak\u201d claims, though it said it did not believe the virus to be \u201cman-made.\u201d The action was originally blamed on the Trump administration\u2014which was said to be pressuring the intelligence community to endorse the \u201clab\u201d theory. However, under Biden, America\u2019s top spies seem to be saying the same thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While this is all very interesting, it\u2019s perhaps helpful to note that we won\u2019t have a clear picture of how this global disaster started for some time\u2014if ever. After the WHO report\u2019s release, a cadre of scientists recently called for<\/a> new, politically neutral investigations into the virus\u2019s origins, so the best we can all do at this point is stay tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Top U.S. intelligence officials reiterated Thursday that they could not rule out the possibility that covid-19 leaked out of a Chinese government lab, as opposed to originating from animal-to-human transmission. During a House committee hearing on global [read more]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5963,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[35],"class_list":{"0":"post-5962","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-lab-leak"},"yoast_head":"\nCIA: We Can't Rule Out the 'Lab Leak' Theory of Covid-19's Origins -<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.webfxonline.com\/?p=5962\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"CIA: We Can't Rule Out the 'Lab Leak' Theory of Covid-19's Origins -\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Top U.S. intelligence officials reiterated Thursday that they could not rule out the possibility that covid-19 leaked out of a Chinese government lab, as opposed to originating from animal-to-human transmission. 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