The CIA has changed its assessment on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, now favoring the lab leak theory. Under its new director, John Ratcliffe, the agency released an assessment on the origins of COVID-19.
The review was ordered by former President Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan toward the end of Biden’s time in office.
Analysts made the assessment with “low confidence” despite former CIA director Bill Burns, who remained agnostic on the origins, telling the agency it needed to look at the existing evidence again and come down on one side or the other.
Security personnel stand guard outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan as members of the World Health Organization team investigating the origins of the COVID-19 coronavirus made a visit to the institute in Wuhan in China’s central Hubei province Feb. 3, 2021. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)
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The agency has maintained for years it did not have enough intelligence to conclude whether COVID originated in a lab or a wet market in Wuhan, China. Despite the new assessment favoring a lab leak, there was no indication of new evidence.
“CIA 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,” a CIA spokesperson told Fox News.
“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.”
Ratcliffe, who was confirmed Thursday, has long been a proponent of the lab leak theory. In an interview with Breitbart, Ratcliffe framed the assessment of COVID’s origins as part of a broader strategy “addressing the threat from China.”
He also said he wants the CIA to “get off the sidelines” and take a stand.
John Ratcliffe appears for a Senate Intelligence confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill Jan. 15, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
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In a March 2023 Fox News piece co-written with Cliff Sims, Ratcliffe accused the Biden administration of trying to keep a growing consensus around the lab leak theory quiet by suppressing “what can clearly be assessed from the intelligence they possess.”
He also cast doubt on the notion that the CIA did not have enough evidence to come to a conclusion about the virus’ origins.
“The CIA is the world’s premier spy agency. Its reach is unmatched, its ability to acquire information unrivaled. And yet here we are three-and-a-half years later and there is ample public reporting that the CIA just doesn’t have enough information to make an assessment. This is utter nonsense,” the March 2023 piece says.
A sign about COVID-19 testing is displayed outside a COVID-19 testing site as a health walker collects testing tubes in Wheeling, Ill., Dec. 3, 2021. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
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In the same piece, Ratcliffe and Sims dismissed the idea that the virus emerged naturally, claiming there was “a complete absence of intelligence or scientific evidence” pointing to that conclusion.
When he testified before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in April 2023, Ratcliffe said the lab leak theory was “the only explanation credibly supported by our intelligence, by science and by common sense.”
