The CIA changes its mind and in an official note announces that it has reached the conclusion that the Covid pandemic most likely resulted from a laboratory leak .
In doing so, it joined the FBI and the Department of Energy in believing a laboratory accident in Wuhan, China, was the likely source of the Covid-19 virus, which has killed more than 1.2 million Americans and more than seven million people worldwide .
“The CIA assesses with low confidence that a research-related origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely than a natural origin based on available reports,” a spokesperson for the agency said. The spokesperson emphasized that the assessment is based on a “low confidence” level and that the CIA will continue to evaluate “any new reports of available credible intelligence or open source information that may change its assessment.”
The CIA had previously argued that it did not have enough information to assess whether the virus jumped from an animal to a human or arose from a lab accident. The agency said in its statement Saturday that “both the natural and research-related scenarios for the COVID-19 pandemic remain plausible.”
The origins of the virus still divide the U.S. intelligence community, largely because the Chinese government has not cooperated with international investigations.
John Ratcliffe, the new CIA director confirmed earlier this week by the Senate, has long said he thought the lab escape theory was the most likely explanation. And now his agency is leaning toward it.
(Online Union)
