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When Joe Biden, president of the United States, ordered last week American intelligence to intensify efforts to determine the origins of Covid-19, it gave new life to the theory that the virus may have leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Biden said U.S. intelligence had “concentrated around two scenarios”: that the virus had arisen naturally or was the result of a laboratory accident.
It was the first time the president had given credibility to the possibility that the virus had leaked from a lab, a notion generally criticized as conspiracy theory when Donald Trump first claimed it.
Current and former officials said there were several reasons why the Biden administration was willing to publicly entertain a theory that Democrats had once assassinated.
A crucial factor was that critics were more open to the theory of lab leaks now that Trump, who was thought to want to denounce China for diverting blame for his treatment of the pandemic, was out of office.
They also said Biden was reacting to what intelligence had found. He is now under political pressure to find answers.
“The Biden administration has now studied the mountain of disturbing evidence we faced in the last months of the Trump administration,” said David Asher, who led a state department investigation into Covid’s origins. “It’s a jaw drop. And as they have pointed out, much more needs to be assessed. “
Days before Biden was invested, the state department released an information sheet to the Wuhan Institute that said several investigators had fallen ill with Covid-like symptoms before the first publicly known case. It was also said that the institute had worked secretly with the Chinese military.
Critics did not take the claim seriously because of the opinion that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tended to politicize intelligence. People also focused on the aftermath of the January 6 riots and the inauguration.
“We assumed that the information sheet would not go to the headlines immediately. We wanted to put the information on record so people could take these facts into account when tensions and fevers had dropped, ”said David Feith, a former State Department official who participated in the release.
In March, Asher said publicly that some Wuhan officials were so ill that they were hospitalized. This and a recent Wall Street Journal story that three staff members were hospitalized, helped focus attention on the theory of laboratory leaks.
But one person familiar with the debate said the driving factor was a shift among scientists who had been wary of helping Trump before the election or infuriating influential scientists who had rejected the theory. He said this had helped Democrats be more willing to consider the theory.
“The most important thing that has happened is that prominent virologists have stood out,” he said.
In a letter to Science daily, a group of 18 prominent scientists said both theories were “viable” and should be taken “seriously” until sufficient data was obtained. They said that the recent research that the World Health Organization conducted with China had not considered both scenarios in a balanced way.
“Even those of us working on the issue within the government weren’t aware of how much scientific opinion we had on our side because scientists generally didn’t speak, but in recent months you’ve broken certain prey,” Feith said, in developments including the WHO charter and research.
Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, also seemed to change his stance. Last year, he said science “strongly indicates” that the virus came naturally, but recently said he was not “convinced” and backed an investigation.
While Biden only outlined the view of the intelligence community in his very unusual statement, his willingness to make his provisional findings public also made the theory of laboratory leaks more prominent.
Mathew Burrows, a former senior intelligence official, said he did not remember a president making that statement and said he has historically not wanted to see them try to force a conclusion.
“Obviously, there are Republicans trying to criticize anything that seems like a weak response in China, so I think Biden wants to prove he won’t shy away from accusing them [China] if there is a joint agreement with the intelligence community about the fact that the virus came out of Wuhan’s lab, ”Burrows said.
Mike Gallagher, a Republican congressman who has introduced a bill to declassify all information related to the investigation, also said Biden appeared to be responding to political pressure, especially after members of his team called on China to allow a transparent research, little thing experts believe Beijing will allow.
“Biden felt the pressure,” Gallagher said. “It simply came to our notice then. . . but it’s a good play. “
A person familiar with the situation said the National Intelligence Council, which collects information from the entire intelligence community, produced two reports last year evaluating U.S. intelligence on the origins of Covid. The director of national intelligence declined to comment.
These efforts, along with a third “scrub” of intelligence this year, provoked Biden saying last week that two of the 18 branches of the intelligence community leaned toward the natural-origin scenario, while a third was more inclined toward the theory of laboratory leaks.
Biden said the three only had “low or moderate confidence” in their findings, while the other branches did not have enough evidence. This has raised concerns that 90 days will not be enough for intelligence officials to reach a solid determination.
“The community at large is far from reaching anything we could even call a firm conclusion halfway through,” said Paul Pillar, a former senior CIA official. “The fact that many of the agencies involved have not reached a consensus even for a ‘low-trust’ trial indicates to you that they are a long way from anything conclusive.”
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