The CIA concluded that the COVVI-19 had probably started with a leak from a Chinese laboratory in a new assessment of the origins of the pandemic which killed millions of people.
The American intelligence agency said it had concluded with a low degree of confidence that the COVVI-19 virus had escaped from the research center, which constitutes a change in relation to its previous position according to which the information was insufficient to achieve a conclusion.
The CIA considers with a low level of confidence than an origin linked to the search for the Pandemic of COVID-19 is more likely than a natural origin on the basis of the available reports, the agency said in a statement on Saturday.
The CIA continues to assess that the scenarios related to the research and natural origin of the COVVI-19 pandemic remain plausible.
The American intelligence community, made up of 18 agencies, has been asking for the origin of the COVVI-19 for four years to determine whether the virus appeared naturally from a wet market in Wuhan or if it has escaped the Wuhan Virology Institute in the United States. Chinese city.
The CIA joins the FBI and the Department of Energy to conclude that the virus came from the Wuhan laboratory. But he said that he had little confidence in this judgment and that he would continue to assess any new credible intelligence report or any open source information available that could change his assessment.
The new evaluation was made public only a few days after John Ratcliffe oath as Director of the CIA.
In an interview with Breitbart News after being confirmed as the choice of President Donald Trump to direct the intelligence agency, Ratcliffe said that he thought that information and common sense dictate that Covid's origins were a flight to the 'Wuhan Institute of Virology and that he would ensure that the public knows that the agency [CIA] will get out of the bench.
National Security Advisor Mike Waltz said that those who had been qualified as conspiracy theorists for affirming that the COVVI-19 was the result of a laboratory leak was still right.
We cannot stop the next pandemic if we do not understand how the last happened! Waltz wrote on X.
An American official said that Bill Burns, CIA chief under the Biden administration, asked the CIA team responsible for assessing the evidence to take a stand on the origin of the COVVI-19, but had not dictated the result.
The Burns directive intervened while Jake Sullivan, who was a national security advisor, ordered the intelligence community to re -examine the origins of the pandemic while the Biden team was preparing to leave their duties.
The US official stressed that the CIA had revised its assessment before Ratcliffe takes an oath as a new director.
I said from the start that the covid probably came from Wuhan laboratories. Communist China hid it and the liberal media covered it, said Tom Cotton, republican president of the senatorial intelligence committee.
I am happy that the CIA concluded in the last days of the Biden administration that the theory of laboratory leaks is the most plausible explanation of the origins of the covid, and I congratulate the director Ratcliffe to have held his promise to publish This conclusion. Today, the most important thing is to make China pay the fact that it unleashes a scourge on the world.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington declared itself firmly opposed to the politicization and stigma of the origin of the virus.
The so-called report of the United States, without any substantial evidence, concocts misleading conclusions, throws dirty water on China and engages in framing. It is also an old routine of political manipulation consisting in finding the source and which has no credibility, said the embassy.
The new CIA evaluation change comes a little more than a week after Trump had his first telephone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping in at least 2021. While many foreign policy experts have expected this That Trump adopts a hard line with regard to China, in particular in terms of trade, during his first week, but the president has so far abstained to take severe measures against Beijing.
In an interview with Fox News this week, Trump said that even if customs tariffs gave him huge power over China, he preferred not to use it.
He also signed a decree reporting the deadline set for the Chinese owner of Tiktok to give in the popular video application in order to avoid a ban in the United States.
