The CIA said Saturday it has shifted its previous assessments and has concluded that it’s likely the Covid-19 virus was leaked from a Chinese lab before it became a global pandemic but added that the agency had “low confidence” in its judgment.
“CIA assesses with low confidence that a research-related origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely than a natural origin based on the available body of reporting,” a CIA spokesperson said in a statement. “CIA continues to assess that both research-related and natural origin scenarios of the COVID-19 pandemic remain plausible.”
The spokesperson added that the agency has “low confidence in this judgement” and will continue to evaluate any new intelligence reporting or relevant information.
For years, the CIA has said it was unclear whether the Covid pandemic emerged from human exposure to an infected animal or from an event at a research lab in China.
U.S. intelligence agencies and other government departments have been divided over the origins of the virus. The FBI and the Energy Department have said it was likely the virus was the result of a lab leak, while other agencies assessed that natural human exposure to an infected animal was the most likely scenario. The CIA had been agnostic until now.
The CIA’s assessment was not based on new intelligence but on analysts reviewing existing information, a source familiar with the matter told NBC News. The review was ordered in the closing weeks of the Biden administration and completed before President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the source said.
Outgoing CIA Director William Burns had told analysts that instead of remaining neutral on the different theories about Covid’s origins, they should take a position — though he did not express a preference for which theory to support, the source said.
The New York Times first reported on the circumstances of the new review.
The new director of the spy agency, John Ratcliffe, who was nominated by President Donald Trump and confirmed to his post by the Senate this week, approved the declassification of the new assessment, the source said. Ratcliffe has long argued that the virus most likely emerged from a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Ratcliffe told Breitbart News in an interview posted Friday that he wanted the CIA to drop its neutral stance as to the origins of the virus and “get off the sidelines.”
“One of the things that I’ve talked about a lot is addressing the threat from China on a number of fronts, and that goes back to why a million Americans died and why the Central Intelligence Agency has been sitting on the sidelines for five years in not making an assessment about the origins of COVID,” Ratcliffe said. “That’s a day-one thing for me.”
“I’ve been on record, as you know, in saying I think our intelligence, our science, and our common sense all really dictates that the origins of COVID was a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” he said. “But the CIA has not made that assessment or at least not made that assessment publicly. So I’m going to focus on that and look at the intelligence and make sure that the public is aware that the agency is going to get off the sidelines.”
Ratcliffe, who served as director of national intelligence during Trump’s first term, said he would ensure the president is armed with the best intelligence available when he deals with China.
“As President Trump deals with [Chinese] President Xi [Jinping], he needs to be armed with the very best intelligence and to be able to talk about China in a way that if they caused or contributed to the death of a million Americans, the president needs to be armed with that,” Ratcliffe said.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology has faced questions over its previous research into bat coronaviruses and alleged security lapses. The Covid-19 virus was first detected in Wuhan in 2019.
China has accused the United States of trying to “smear” Beijing with what it calls false allegations about the virus’ origins and has insisted it has been transparent about the outbreak.
