The intelligence community is investigating whether COVID-19 originated through an accidental escape from a Wuhan lab or through a natural emergence, spy agency leaders confirmed, as they warned more broadly about the Chinese Communist Party’s influence efforts inside the United States.
Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, asked Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines about COVID-19’s origins during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on the worldwide threats assessment report, arguing, “We can’t conclude definitively that the virus that causes COVID-19 emerged naturally until there’s been a transmission chain that’s been identified, how the virus evolved and transmitted between species, and to date, no such path of zoonotic transmission has been definitively identified.” He asked if that was accurate, and the Biden spy chief confirmed the Wuhan lab was one of two main hypotheses.
“It is absolutely accurate the intelligence community does not know exactly where, when, or how COVID-19 virus was transmitted initially,” Haines testified. “And basically, components have coalesced around two alternative theories. These scenarios are, it emerged naturally from contact with infected animals, or it was a laboratory accident, as you identified. And that is where we are right now. But we’re continuing to work on this issue and collect information and to the best we can essentially to give you greater confidence in what the scenario is.”
INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY WARNS ABOUT CCP
Officials from the Trump and Biden administrations said that the Chinese government worked to thwart an independent investigation into the origins of the coronavirus, which has killed 2.96 million people worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University. The United States has criticized China for a lack of transparency at the start of the pandemic and condemned China for spreading baseless conspiracy theories about COVID-19 originating with the U.S. military.
Rubio, the vice chairman of the committee, said an accidental lab escape was “plausible” and pointed to some reasons why he thought so, including that “researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology have demonstrated from their publication record that they were skilled at techniques in which they genetically modified bat coronaviruses,” as well as that viruses such as SARS have escaped from Chinese labs in the past and that U.S. diplomats warned about subpar biosafety standards at the Wuhan lab in 2018.
A Trump State Department fact sheet on the Wuhan Institute of Virology declassified in mid-January assessed that lab workers fell ill with COVID-19-like symptoms in 2019, scientists there studied viruses genetically similar to SARS-CoV-2, and the Wuhan lab conducted secret experiments with the Chinese military as well as gain-of-function research. The Biden administration has not weighed in publicly on that.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in late March that the WHO-China team had not fully investigated the potential of COVID-19 originating at a Wuhan lab despite it being dubbed “extremely unlikely” by the WHO-China team. The State Department and U.S. allies released a joint statement critiquing the WHO-China report.
CIA Director William Burns and NSA Director Gen. Paul Nakasone also weighed in Wednesday on the COVID-19 origins controversy.
“I agree with everything Avril said,” Burns said. “The one thing that’s clear to us and to our analysts is that the Chinese leadership has not been fully forthcoming or fully transparent in working with the WHO or in providing the kind of original complete data that would help answer those questions. We’re doing everything we can using all the sources available to all of us on this panel to try to get to the bottom of it.”
Nakasone added: “We continue to gather and inform a series of pieces that we’re looking at working very very closely partnered with, obviously, the IC here and also with a number of other partners in the interagency and in academia as well.”
Former President Donald Trump‘s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield said in March that COVID-19 likely originated through an accidental escape from the Wuhan lab.
Rubio also pointed to ODNI’s newly released report on global threats, quoting from the report: “Beijing has been intensifying efforts to shape the political environment in the United States to promote its policy preferences, mold public discourse, pressure political figures whom Beijing believes oppose its interests, and muffle criticism of China.” The senator argued China’s influence operations deserved great focus.
“I think we make a mistake to not focus on both China’s capabilities and its growing and intensifying efforts to involve and engage itself in our political environment here in the United States,” he said. “Different aims, perhaps, different tactics in some ways, but certainly they have every capability that the Russians do, and more in many cases, and they are certainly interested in molding public discourse and creating … pressure on political figures who they don’t like here in the United States.”
Haines replied that she “couldn’t agree more” and that, within ODNI, the National Counterintelligence and Security Center “focuses on this issue and has done enormous amounts of outreach to the private sector.” The spy chief said that she was working “to try to have engagements that help to bring this to various sectors to help them understand the degree to which China is trying to influence and also the degree to which they’re engaging in counterintelligence activities” and called it “a top priority.”
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FBI Director Christopher Wray also replied, “I don’t think there is any country that presents a more severe threat to our innovation, our economic security, and our democratic ideas” than China, saying that “the tools in their toolbox to influence our businesses, our academic institutions, our governments at all levels are deep and wide and persistent.” The FBI chief illustrated “the diversity of their tactics” by pointing to Justice Department indictments related to China’s Operation Fox Hunt, “which is essentially them conducting uncoordinated, illegal law enforcement activity here on U.S. soil as a means to threaten, intimidate, harass, blackmail” the Chinese diaspora in the U.S.
Wray added: “We have now over 2,000 investigations that tie back to the Chinese government. And on the economic espionage side alone, it’s about a 1,300% increase over the last several years. We’re opening a new investigation into China in 10 hours, and I can assure the committee that’s not because our folks don’t have anything to do with their time.”
