The virus that causes COVID-19 most likely leaked from a Chinese laboratory, according to a classified report based on new intelligence and recently sent to the White House and key members of Congress.
The stunning assertion by the US Energy Department comes more than a year after the FBI concluded a lab accident in China was the origin of the disease, which has killed more than 6.8 million people around the world, including 1.1 million in the US.
The FBI’s decision was made with “moderate confidence” and remains the bureau’s opinion, said The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the Energy Department’s own finding on Sunday.
By contrast, the Department of Energy made its determination with “low confidence,” sources who’ve read the classified report told the Journal.
But the judgment is considered important because the Energy Department — which oversees the American nuclear weapons program — runs a network of national labs and has a great deal of scientific expertise, the Journal said.
Both agencies reportedly arrived at their conclusions for different reasons, with the sources declining to detail the new intelligence cited by the Energy Department.
In response to the Journal’s report, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said, “There is a variety of views in the intelligence community” and that the origin of COVID-19 remained under investigation.
“Here’s what I can tell you: President Biden has directed, repeatedly, every element of our intelligence community to put effort and resources behind getting to the bottom of this question,” Sullivan told CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“And if we gain any further insight or information, we will share it with Congress, and we will share it with the American people. But right now, there is not a definitive answer that has emerged from the intelligence community on this question.”
The Energy Department’s assessment came in an update to a 2021 document from Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines’ office, the Journal said.
It reportedly reaffirmed a consensus in the intelligence community that the emergence of COVID-19 wasn’t the result of a Chinese biological weapons program.
The update was prepared in light of new intelligence, additional study of academic literature and consultation with outside experts, a senior intelligence official told the Journal.
The update is reportedly less than five pages long, and it’s unclear whether an unclassified version will be made public.
The National Intelligence Council and four unidentified agencies still believe with “low confidence” that the virus first spread to humans as the result of natural transmission from an infected animal, according to the Journal.
The Central Intelligence Agency and another unidentified agency reportedly remain undecided on the lab leak and natural transmission theories.
Last year, Senate Republicans released an interim report that found the virus most likely leaked out of a Chinese lab and that ” the hypothesis of a natural zoonotic origin no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt or the presumption of accuracy.”
On Sunday, US Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) told NBC’s “Meet The Press” that Congress needs to hold “public hearings on this and really dig into it.”A lot of evidence that [COVID came] from the Chinese, and when other countries even raise it, like Australia, the Chinese use their coercive economic activities to shut people up,” he said.
“Look, this is a country that has no problem coming out and lying to the world. We just saw that with this Chinese spy balloon,” Sullivan said, referring to the orb that drifted over parts of the US before famously being shot down by the US military earlier this month. It’s the nature of a Communist dictatorship to lie to their own people, to lie to the world,” the pol said.
“I think that we need to make sure every country knows that and then look at what the consequences could be,” he said. “Obviously millions of deaths, huge economic impacts, and it would once again show that the Chinese Communist Party is not only a menace, but the nature of these regimes is to lie to the world. And we need to make that clear to people.”
Stanford University microbiologist David Relman, who’s served on several federal advisory boards, told the Journal he is glad US officials “were willing to set aside their preconceptions and objectively re-examine what we know and don’t know about COVID origins.
“My plea is that we not accept an incomplete answer or give up because of political expediency,” he said.
The Energy Department declined to discuss details of its assessment but said in a statement that it “continues to support the thorough, careful, and objective work of our intelligence professionals in investigating the origins of COVID-19, as the President directed.”
Biden ordered US spy agencies to probe the source of the disease — including whether it came from a Chinese lab in Wuhan– in May 2021, more than a year after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology has been at the center of suspicion since US intelligence learned that three researchers there fell ill and had to be hospitalized in November 2019, shortly before China confirmed the COVID-19 outbreak.
Some former US officials previously told the Journal that the workers were involved in coronavirus research.
On Aug. 1, Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) asked FBI Director Christopher Wray to share records of its investigation but the bureau declined to comply in November, citing a Justice Department policy on preserving “the integrity of ongoing investigations.”
