An arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation is suing the Central Intelligence Agency, accusing it of withholding records detailing payments to analysts to bury findings that a lab leak was the most likely explanation for the COVID-19 outbreak.
The think tank’s Oversight Project filed a federal lawsuit against the CIA Dec. 22, alleging the agency failed to comply with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests regarding analysts who allegedly “received financial incentives to change their position on the origin of the virus,” according to the first copy of the complaint. times reported Tuesday by the Daily Caller.
The suit in Washington, DC, federal court asked for a “preliminary and permanent injunction compelling” the CIA to expedite the release of the records requested by Heritage within 20 days or “by such other date as the Court deems appropriate.”
“The Biden administration has refused to be transparent with Congress and the American people about the origins of COVID-19,” said Kyle Brosnan, chief counsel for the Oversight Project.
“A CIA whistleblower has made serious allegations that the agency is buying off agency employees to further obstruct efforts to get to the truth about the origin of the virus. This obstruction cannot stand and we are fighting in federal court to resolve this issue.”
A conservative Heritage Foundation project is suing the Central Intelligence Agency for withholding records about allegedly paying analysts to bury his findings about the origins of COVID-19. Getty Images The think tank’s Oversight Project filed a federal lawsuit on Friday against the CIA, alleging the agency failed to comply with a September Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Future Publishing via Getty Images
A senior CIA agent told the House Republican committee chairman in September that the agency offered payments to six analysts tasked with determining the origins of SARS-CoV-2 if they said the virus jumped from animals to humans.
A Sept. 12 letter from Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) and Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) to CIA Director William Burns also demanded documentation and communication about the payment.
“According to the whistleblower, at the end of his review, six of the seven members of the Team believe the intelligence and science are sufficient to make a low confidence assessment that COVID-19 originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China,” Dewan Rakyat. panel chair wrote to Burns.
A Sept. 12 letter from Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) to the CIA also demanded documents about the payments. AP
“The seventh Team member, who is also the most senior, is the only officer who believes that COVID-19 is caused by zoonosis.”
“The whistleblower further asserted that in order to achieve the final determination of public uncertainty, the other six members were given substantial financial incentives to change their positions,” they added of the group of analysts, which included “experienced officials with significant scientific expertise.”
The Heritage Oversight Project filed a FOIA request for records related to the CIA’s internal analysis on Sept. 20 — but has yet to receive the documents or an explanation for the delay, the complaint states.
Wenstrup has since claimed that Dr. Anthony Fauci, was secretly “escorted” to CIA headquarters to “influence” the CIA analyst’s findings at one point. AP
Wenstrup has since claimed that the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, was secretly “escorted” to CIA headquarters to “influence” the analyst’s findings at one point.
In February, the FBI became the first US intelligence agency to conclude the coronavirus outbreak most likely started with a lab leak.
The Department of Energy delivered a similar assessment the same month, citing new intelligence.
The US Intelligence Community found “biosecurity concerns” and “genetic engineering” taking place at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where scientists also fell ill in the fall of 2019. AFP via Getty Images
But a few months later, in a 10-page report, the entire US intelligence community, including that agency along with others, declassified its original COVID findings, which had most “agencies assess that SARS-CoV-2 was not genetically engineered. “
The report, however, found “biosafety concerns” and “genetic engineering” to be taking place at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where several scientists fell ill in the fall of 2019 with symptoms “consistent with but not diagnostic of COVID-19.”
A Government Accountability Office report in June found that US taxpayers footed the bill for more than $2 million in risky profit research with the coronavirus at the Wuhan lab, made possible by grants provided by the National Institutes of Health, including Fauci’s NIAID. , and the United States Agency for International Development.
A Government Accountability Office report in June found that US taxpayers footed the bill for more than $2 million in risky profit-making research with the coronavirus in a Wuhan lab. AP
Fauci is scheduled to convene with the House COVID subcommittee on January 8 and 9, 2024, to answer questions about his handling of inquiries about the US public health response and to “address the various controversies that arose during and after the pandemic,” according to Wenstrup.
John Ratcliffe, director of national intelligence under former president Donald Trump, testified before Congress earlier this year that the “lab leak theory” was the “only” plausible explanation for the outbreak.
“My informed judgment as a person with as much access as anyone to our government’s intelligence … has been and continues to be that a lab leak is the only explanation that can be trusted by our intelligence, by science and by common sense,” Ratcliffe told members House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in April.
John Ratcliffe, director of national intelligence under former president Donald Trump, testified before Congress that the “lab leak theory” was the “only” plausible explanation for the outbreak. AP
“If our intelligence and evidence supporting the lab leak were placed side by side with our intelligence and evidence pointing to a natural origin or spillover theory, the lab leak side of the ledger would be long, convincing, even overwhelming – while the spill side would be almost empty and weak .”
The COVID-19 pandemic has claimed nearly 7 million lives worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
