Key points
- CIA shifts assessment on COVID origins
- Says COVID-19 escaped from a lab
- China denies allegations
ISLAMABAD: Newly-confirmed US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director John Ratcliffe has said the agency’s decision to release a Biden-era assessment favouring the once widely dismissed COVID-19 lab-leak origin story marks a step towards transparency with the American people.
Ratcliffe resealed the report shortly after taking over the post and affirmed the importance of restoring trust in American institutions.
“I had the opportunity on my first day to make public an assessment that actually took place in the Biden administration, so it can’t be accused of being political,” he told Fox News.
Incident in Wuhan
Ratcliffe said the CIA has assessed that the most likely cause of this pandemic that has wrought so much devastation around the world was because of a lab-related incident in Wuhan.
I had the opportunity on my first day to make public an assessment that actually took place in the Biden administration, so it can’t be accused of being political.” – CIA Director John Ratcliffe
“I think it was important for the American people to see an institution like the CIA get off the sidelines and be truthful about what our intelligence shows and, at the same time, protect us from adversaries like China if they caused or contributed to this,” he added.
Lab-leak theory
The CIA now appears to slightly favour the lab-leak theory that suggests gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China may have directly contributed to the virus.
A CIA spokesperson told Fox News that the agency “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.
CIA continues to assess that both research-related and natural origin scenarios of the COVID-19 pandemic remain plausible.”
“We have low confidence in this judgment and will continue to evaluate any available credible new intelligence reporting or open-source information that could change CIA’s assessment.”