Republican lawmakers told President Biden on Monday to declassify the intelligence behind the Department of Energy’s conclusion the coronavirus pandemic most likely resulted from a laboratory leak in China.
It was unclear what intelligence led energy officials to make the conclusion, which was issued with “low confidence” — meaning a level of uncertainty remained. Officials updated their assessment based on new intelligence, further review of academic literature and consultations with experts outside the government, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported on the conclusions in a classified intelligence report to Congress and the White House.
“Classified documents leaked (they should be declassified!) showing scientists at DOE believe COVID leaked from Wuhan Lab,” Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, wrote on Twitter.
Sen. Mike Braun, Indiana Republican, pointed to legislation he sponsored to make all intelligence related to the virus’s origins available to the American public.
“President Biden needs to declassify everything we know today,” he tweeted Monday.
The new assessment adds another layer of confusion to the conflicting assessments from the U.S. government. Multiple agencies have been trying to pinpoint the source of the virus for years.
The virus was initially blamed on a wet market in Wuhan, the central Chinese city where the virus was first detected in 2019 before spreading around the globe in early 2020 and killing nearly 7 million people.
The lab-leak theory, which was initially discredited as disinformation by the political left, gained credence late in the Trump administration and was bolstered by evidence that some workers at the Wuhan lab were hospitalized for flu-like illness before the virus exploded across the city.
Mr. Paul and other conservatives have blasted Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of infectious diseases search at the National Institutes of Health, for downplaying the lab-leak theory in favor of the natural-spillover theory.
The FBI previously concluded with moderate confidence that a lab leak was responsible for the virus’s spread, while intelligence agencies have determined with low confidence the virus emerged from natural channels, according to a review Mr. Biden ordered in 2021.
“There is a variety of views in the intelligence community,” National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “Some elements of the intelligence community have reached conclusions on one side, some on the other. A number of them have said they just don’t have enough information to be sure.”
U.S. officials say it will be difficult to come to a firm conclusion unless Beijing provides more assistance. The communist government has not been forthcoming, even suggesting the virus was spawned at Fort Detrick in Maryland.
For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.
Source:Washington Times
