Former Spy Chief Has “High Degree of Confidence” COVID Came From Wuhan Lab

The top spy chief for former President Donald Trump revealed he has a “high degree of confidence” that COVID-19 emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China as the Chinese government continues to stonewall investigations into the pandemic’s origins.

John Ratcliffe said his access to high-level intelligence led him to believe that COVID-19 got its start in the Chinese lab.

NIH FINALLY ENDS SUBAWARD TO WUHAN LAB

“Let me just say this: As the person that had the most access to the most intelligence — you know, in the intelligence community we talk about degrees of confidence, low degree of confidence, moderate degrees of confidence, high degrees of confidence,” Ratcliffe told CBS News over the weekend. “I had a high degree of confidence that the origins of COVID-19 were in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Now, I was the top intelligence official, and that was my opinion.”

Ratcliffe said that “the intelligence showed a lot more than I’m allowed to still talk about publicly,” but he added: “There is much that has not been declassified about the origins of COVID-19 because it might jeopardize our ability to, you know, determine other information about the Chinese Communist Party — what they may plan to do with Taiwan and things like that.”

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence under President Joe Biden released an assessment last summer stating that one U.S. intelligence agency assessed with “moderate confidence” that COVID-19 most likely emerged from a lab in Wuhan, while four U.S. spy agencies and the National Intelligence Council believed with “low confidence” that COVID-19 most likely had a natural origin.

The New York Times identified the FBI as the agency that “backs the lab leak theory” in October.

China has repeatedly tried to shift blame for COVID-19 to the U.S. military, which the United States has condemned as baseless.

Dr. Peter Ben Embarek, the head of the visiting World Health Organization team in Wuhan, announced at a press conference in February 2021 that a jump from an animal to another animal to humans was the most likely, but he claimed an accidental release from a Wuhan lab was “extremely unlikely” and suggested there was no need to investigate that option further.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus admitted in July 2021 that there was a “premature push” to dismiss the lab escape possibility but that the Chinese government repeatedly shot down another investigation.

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An advisory group assembled by the WHO said in June that the lab leak hypothesis needed additional study.

Scientists consulting with the U.S. government early in the pandemic believed COVID-19 originating from a lab in Wuhan was possible or even likely.