CIA: COVID-19 Virus 'Most Likely' Came from Chinese Laboratory Leak
The United States Federal government's intelligence agency, the CIA, found that laboratory origins were "more likely" to be the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic. The agency joins two other leading US agencies that have previously made similar assessments.
“The CIA assesses with low confidence that research-related origins of the COVID-19 pandemic are more likely than natural origins based on available reports,” an agency spokesperson said in a statement to media on January 25, 2025.
The agency emphasized that it has “low confidence” in the assessment and still considers that the virus could have natural origins.
The CIA will “continue to evaluate any new credible intelligence reports or open source information that could change the CIA's assessment,” the spokesperson said.
The assessment signals a change in attitude from intelligence agencies that for years have refrained from providing conclusions on the issue, citing a lack of information.
John Ratcliffe, the new CIA director, has long supported the possibility of a laboratory leak, telling a US congressional panel in April 2023 that it was “the only explanation” for a disease that killed millions of people around the world.
After winning confirmation from the US Senate, Ratcliffe told Breitbart News that addressing the origins of the pandemic would be a priority on his first day.
“I have gone on record, as you know, to say that I think our intelligence, our science, and our common sense all absolutely indicate that the origins of COVID were a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” he said, adding that he planned to check intelligence and make the agency “move more actively.”
International efforts to gain more clarity on the Chinese regime's source of the virus have not made much progress.
In late December 2024, the World Health Organization (WHO) repeated its request for Beijing to share COVID-related data.
“This is a moral and scientific obligation,” the organization said. “Without transparency, sharing and cooperation between countries, the world cannot adequately prevent and prepare for future outbreaks and pandemics.”
Since the pandemic broke out of the Chinese city of Wuhan, Beijing has silenced citizen journalists, doctors and academics who sought to shed light on the issue or criticize the regime's handling of the virus.
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US Senator Tom Cotton, chairman of the US Senate Intelligence Committee, said he was pleased to see the CIA's assessment.
“I have said from the start that COVID likely came from a Wuhan laboratory. The Chinese communists covered it up and the liberal media protected them,” he said in a statement on January 25. “Now, the most important thing is to make China pay for unleashing the plague on the world.”
The FBI and US Department of Energy have previously assessed that the virus came from a laboratory. The US State Department under the Trump administration first stated in a fact sheet that several researchers fell ill with COVID-like symptoms in the fall of 2019, months before the pandemic exploded onto a global scale.
Leaked Chinese documents obtained by The Epoch Times also show that Chinese hospitals were treating patients with COVID-like symptoms months before the regime's official timeline.
“The Chinese government, it seems, has gone out of its way to obstruct and obscure the work that is being done—the work that we are doing, the work that the U.S. government and our closest foreign partners are doing,” said then-FBI Director Christopher Wray, in early 2023.” And that's very unfortunate for everyone.”
Source :
https://etindonesia.com/2025/01/27/cia-covid-19-kemungkinan-besar-berasal-dari-kebocoran-laboratorium-tiongkok/
