Options inside the FBI and other government officials with knowledge of the Biden administration’s inside work during the pandemic said that people of the U.S. intelligence community who believed that the coronavirus may have originated from a lab leak in China were prohibited from sharing their thoughts and research with the broader apple area. The Biden administration held that COVID-19 most likely originated organically in Wuhan, China, and was then passed on to humans from infected animals in the first few months after it arrived in the country. They said this was potentially due to the country’s under-regulated and extensive wildlife trade. A much smaller group within the intelligence community criticized this view because they thought a purposeful or unintentional lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the most likely explanation for the outbreak. The Biden administration reportedly prevented some of the officials who believed in the likelihood of a COVID-19 lab-leak theory from speaking with the president and other intelligence community leaders, according to a new Wall Street Journal report. 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. COVID” MOST LIKELY” LEAKED FROM WUHAN LAB, SOCIAL DISTANCING” NO BASED ON SCIENCE,” SELECT COMMITTEE FINDSAt the time, the FBI was the only government agency to rule out a lab leak origin theory. 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. The FBI would be asked to attend the briefing, Bannan told the Wall Street Journal, “being the only agency that determined 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.” According to sources with knowledge of the situation, three scientists at the National Center for Medical Intelligence, a sub-agency within the Department of Defense’s Defense Intelligence Agency, were also prohibited from sharing their research that suggested the coronavirus was the result of a lab leak. In the end, a Defense Intelligence Agency Inspector General report was requested to determine whether the three scientists ‘ evaluation had been suppressed. The ODNI’s spokesperson declined to comment on the unofficial report. FAUCI DENIES SEEKING TO SUPPRESS COVID-19 LAB LEAK ORIGIN THEORYThe 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. The three scientists were instructed by their superiors to halt any continued sharing of their work with people at the FBI, which they were told was “off the reservation,” according to the Wall Street Journal in July 2021. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence responded to the assertions made in the Wall Street Journal’s report by a spokesperson for the organization who said 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.” According to the spokesperson, efforts were made to include both of these viewpoints in the intelligence assessment in accordance with the” standard process” for the coordination of a typical National Intelligence Council assessment.
Biden administration suppressed apple officials ‘ views that supported COVID-19 lab leak idea: record
