The Central Intelligence Agency offered to pay analysts to bury their findings that COVID-19 most likely leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, a new whistleblower testified to Congress.
A senior CIA official told the head of a House committee that his agency was trying to pay six analysts who found SARS-CoV-2 likely originated in a Wuhan lab if they changed their position and said the virus moved from animals to humans, according to a letter sent Tuesday to the Director CIA William Burns.
Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) and Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) requested all documents, communications and payment information from the CIA’s COVID Discovery Team by September 26.
“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. the chairperson of the writing panel.
The CIA offered to pay analysts to bury their findings that COVID-19 most likely leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, according to a letter sent to Director William Burns.Getty Images
A senior CIA official has told the head of a House committee that his agency is trying to pay six analysts who found SARS-CoV-2 likely originated in a Wuhan lab if they change their positions.REUTERS
“The seventh Team member, who is also the most senior, is the only officer who believes that COVID-19 is caused by zoonosis.”
“The informant further argued that in order to reach a general determination of uncertainty, the other six members were given substantial financial incentives to change their positions,” they said, noting that the analysts were “experienced officers with significant scientific expertise.”
Wenstrup and Turner also requested documents and communications between the CIA and other federal agencies, including the State Department, the FBI, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Energy.
In a separate letter, the head of the House committee identified former CIA chief operating officer Andrew Makridis as “playing a key role” in the COVID investigation and asked him to sit for a transcribed interview.
“At CIA we are committed to the highest standards of analytical rigor, integrity and objectivity. We don’t pay analysts to reach specific conclusions,” CIA Public Affairs Director Tammy Kupperman Thorp told The Post in a statement. “We take this allegation seriously and are looking into it. We will ensure that our Congressional oversight committee is duly informed.”
Makridis did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The FBI is the first US intelligence agency to conclude the COVID-19 pandemic was most likely caused by a lab leak. In February, the Department of Energy also concluded a possible lab leak, based on new intelligence.
In a separate letter, House committee leaders identified former CIA chief operations officer Andrew Makridis as “playing a key role” in the investigation and asked to interview him.
The US intelligence community declassified a 10-page report on the origins of COVID in June, which found “biosecurity concerns” and “genetic engineering” took place at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but most of its “agencies assessed that SARS-CoV-2 was not genetically engineered.”
Several scientists at the Wuhan lab also fell ill in the fall of 2019 with symptoms “consistent with but not diagnostic of COVID-19,” the report said.
The CIA and one other intelligence agency “remain unable to determine the exact origin of the COVID-19 outbreak, as both hypotheses rely on important assumptions or are challenged by conflicting reporting,” he said.
Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) in a letter requesting all documents, communications and payment information from the CIA.AP
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) in the letter said the analyst was “an experienced official with significant scientific expertise.” Getty Images
But some former US intelligence officials disagreed with that assessment. In April, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe told Congress that the so-called “lab leak theory” was “the only” credible explanation for the outbreak, which has since claimed the lives of nearly 7 million people worldwide, according to World Health Organization.
“My informed judgment as someone who has as much access as anyone to our government’s intelligence … has been and continues to be that a lab leak is the only credible explanation supported by our intelligence, by science and by common sense,” Ratcliffe told the House. Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in hearings.
“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 ,” added Ratcliffe, a former Texas Republican congressman who served as President Donald Trump’s second and final director of national intelligence.
In April, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe told Congress that the so-called “lab leak theory” was “the only” credible explanation for the outbreak.AP
As the former number three officer at the CIA during the pandemic, Makridis coordinated his agency’s response to COVID before retiring in 2022.
He currently serves as a senior advisor at Beacon Global Strategies.
The strategic advisory firm also says on its website that he spent “more than a decade in the Intelligence Directorate working and then leading technical analysis of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea’s strategic weapons and space capabilities.”
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
