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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.
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." --->READ MORE HERE
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The CIA shifted its assessment of the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic to determine it is “more likely” to have emerged from a lab leak in China rather than from nature.
The agency had for years said it could not conclude whether Covid-19 was the result of a lab incident or it originated in nature.
But in the final weeks of the Biden administration, former CIA Director William Burns asked analysts and scientists to make a clear determination, stressing the pandemic’s historical significance, according to a senior US official.
“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,” a CIA spokesperson said in a statement.
“CIA continues to assess that both research-related and natural origin scenarios of the Covid-19 pandemic remain plausible.”
The shift in the assessment of the origin of the virus is not based on new intelligence, the agency told the New York Times.
The origin of the virus has long divided intelligence agencies, government departments and scientists.
The FBI and the Department of Energy had assessed that a lab leak was more likely, but both agencies believed the virus came from different Wuhan labs.
The review of the evidence is understood to have been ordered by the Biden administration and completed before Donald Trump’s inauguration.
The virus emerged near the Wuhan Institute of Virology in December 2019, where scientists had been experimenting with bat coronaviruses. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:
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