Secretary of State Mike Pompeo disclaimed any disagreement with White House coronavirus response adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci about whether the virus first emerged from a lab in Wuhan, touting a consensus about the need to scrutinize Chinese government labs.
“There’s no separation,” Pompeo told reporters Wednesday at the State Department. “We’re all trying to figure out the right answer. We’re all trying to get to clarity. There are different levels of certainty assessed at different places. That’s highly appropriate. People stare at data sets and come to different levels of confidence.”
Pompeo has raised the possibility that the virus began with an “accidental release” from a virology lab in Wuhan in recent weeks. In an interview published this week, Fauci emphasized that the virus ultimately began in nature.
“A number of very qualified evolutionary biologists have said that everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that it evolved in nature and then jumped species,” he said.
When asked about the possibility that “scientists found the virus outside the lab, brought it back, and then, it escaped,” Fauci sidestepped the hypothesis as irrelevant.
“That means it was in the wild to begin with,” he said. “That’s why I don’t get what they’re talking about [and] why I don’t spend a lot of time going in on this circular argument.”
Army Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, showed more interest in investigating the idea of a lab leak, though he was less assertive than Pompeo about the possibility.
“Did it come out of the virology lab in Wuhan? Did it occur in the — in the wet market there in Wuhan? Did it occur somewhere else? And the answer to that is we don’t know,” Milley told reporters Tuesday. “It would help a great deal if the Chinese government would open up and allow inspectors and investigators to go there in full transparency so that the world can know the actual, original source of this so that we can apply the lessons learned and prevent outbreaks in the future.”
Pompeo alluded to that comment about an investigation when brushing off questions about whether he is out of step with Milley and Fauci about the likely origins of the virus.
“Let me just put this to bed: Your effort to try to find, to spend your whole life, to drive a little wedge between senior American officials, it’s just false,” he said. “The reality is this came from Wuhan. Every one of us stares at the situation and says, ‘Who can provide the answer to precisely where patient zero is from, where this actually came from?’ We all know who can unlock the keys to that.”
