Intelligence community’s COVID-19 origins division ran deeper than previously thought
Debate within the intelligence community over the origins of COVID-19 ran much deeper than previously known, particularly within the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency.
Three scientists at the National Center for Medical Intelligence, a branch of the Defense Intelligence Agency, conducted a scientific investigation in the summer of 2021, concluding that COVID-19 was likely manipulated in a biolaboratory. But the information was suppressed by the Pentagon and not included in White House briefings on the virus, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal.
The origins of SARS-CoV-2 are still hotly contested almost exactly five years after the start of the pandemic that took the lives of 1.2 million Americans and 7 million people worldwide.
The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, which just published its 520-page final report after two years of investigation, did not find direct evidence that the virus was genetically altered in a lab as opposed to developing naturally within animals and then transitioning into humans.
But the subcommittee did collect testimony from senior Trump and Biden administration public health officials that the lab leak theory of origin for the virus was not a conspiracy theory, as many within both administrations suggested in the early days of the pandemic.
“We uncovered evidence of undue political and personal influence, in addition to the scientific influence detailed in this compelling piece by the Wall Street Journal,” Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH), chairman of the subcommittee, told the Washington Examiner. “Still, the question remains — what was the federal government’s motivation for attempting to influence the COVID origins narrative and why were oppositional opinions suppressed and vilified?”
At the height of the pandemic in May 2021, President Joe Biden commissioned an intelligence community report on the origins of the virus.
The FBI at the time was the only branch of the intelligence community that publicly concluded with “moderate confidence” that a lab accident was the likely origin of the virus.
The Department of Energy revised its original stance last year to support the lab leak theory with “low confidence” instead of animal-to-human.
But leading scientists at the National Center for Medical Intelligence also surmised that the virus likely was human-manipulated based upon genomic sequencing.
The National Center for Medical Intelligence examines global health threats, including infectious diseases and bioweapons, to determine what threats could endanger troops. The agency received a significant boost in funding in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center as the threat of biowarfare increased in the 21st century.
Three scientists at the medical intelligence center determined through genetic testing that a segment of the novel bat coronavirus, known as the spike protein, had been manipulated to infect human cells. They argued these changes indicated that Chinese scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were engaging in gain-of-function experiments to see if they could make the virus more dangerous for humans.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology has a strong reputation as a leading research lab for bat coronaviruses and has received U.S. funding in the past for experimentation on and cataloging of such viruses through grants from the National Institutes of Health to the nonprofit research firm EcoHealth Alliance.
An EcoHealth Alliance project proposed to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, through the Department of Defense that would have been at least in part conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology would have genetically added a furin cleavage site to a bat coronavirus, making it more infectious to humans. The project did not receive U.S. funding and was not conducted by EcoHealth Alliance scientists.
Information about the possible spike protein manipulation, however, was suppressed by superior officers at the National Center for Medical Intelligence, and the Defence Intelligence Agency disagreed with the premise that the virus could have originated in the lab.
The medical intelligence scientists were also instructed by superiors not to brief their counterparts at the FBI on their findings, and their recommended edits were not included in the national security report commissioned by Biden.
Wenstrup’s subcommittee is not being renewed for the incoming Congress, and Wenstrup did not seek reelection in 2024.
But Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has promised to pick up where the House investigation left off and said he plans to use his new chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to delve deeper into what happened at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and what occurred behind closed doors within federal public health agencies.
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President-elect Donald Trump and his nominee for health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., are also expected to take action prohibiting or severely limiting U.S. funding for gain-of-function research relatively quickly within the new administration.
The Defense Intelligence Agency did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
