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The CIA has concluded that Covid-19 likely began as a leak from a laboratory in China in a new assessment of the origins of the pandemic that has killed millions of people.
The US intelligence agency said it had concluded with “low confidence” that the Covid-19 virus had leaked from a research facility, reversing its previous view that there was not enough information to draw a conclusion.
“The CIA estimates with low confidence that a research-related origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely than a natural origin based on available reports,” the agency said in a statement released Saturday.
“The CIA continues to assess that the research-related and natural scenarios of the COVID-19 pandemic remain plausible.”
The US intelligence community — which consists of 18 agencies — has been evaluating the origins of Covid-19 for the past four years to determine whether the virus emerged naturally from a Wuhan wet market or leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. in a Chinese city.
The CIA joins the FBI and the Department of Energy in concluding that the virus originated in a laboratory in Wuhan. But they said they had “low confidence in this judgment” and would “continue to evaluate any available credible new intelligence reports or open source information” that could change their assessment.
The new assessment was released just days after John Ratcliffe was sworn in as CIA director.
In an interview with Breitbart news after being confirmed as President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the intelligence agency, Ratcliffe said he believed intelligence and common sense “dictate that the origin of Covid is a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology” and that he would ensure that ” the public is aware that the agency (CIA) will move away from the sidelines”.
One US official said Bill Burns, CIA chief during the Biden administration, told the CIA team evaluating the evidence to take a position on the origin of Covid-19, but did not dictate the outcome.
Burns’ directive came as national security adviser Jake Sullivan ordered the intelligence community to take another look at the origins of the pandemic as Biden’s team prepared to leave office.
The US official stressed that the CIA revised its assessment before Ratcliffe was sworn in as the new director.
“I said from the beginning that Covid probably originated in the laboratories in Wuhan. Communist China covered it up and the liberal media covered it up, said Tom Cotton, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
“I am pleased that the CIA concluded in the final days of the Biden administration that the lab leak theory is the most likely explanation for the origin of Covid, and I commend Director Ratcliffe for following through on his promise to release this conclusion. The most important thing now is to make China pay for unleashing the scourge on the world.”
The Chinese Embassy in the US did not respond to a request for comment.
The new change in CIA assessment comes just over a week after Trump held his first phone conversation with Chinese President Xi Jinping since at least 2021. Although many foreign policy experts had expected Trump to take a tough stance on China — particularly in on trade – in his first week in office, the president has so far refrained from taking any tough measures against Beijing.
In an interview with Fox News this week, Trump said that while the tariffs give him “tremendous power” over China, he “would rather not have to use it.”
He also signed an executive order delaying the deadline for TikTok’s Chinese owner to sell the popular video app to avoid a US ban.
