The CIA revealed a shift in their stance regarding COVID-19’s origins, now suggesting it likely stemmed from a lab accident in China rather than natural causes.
The agency made this announcement today (Jan. 25), shortly after new director John Ratcliffe took office. Despite maintaining uncertainty for years, they’ve now reached this conclusion – though with “low confidence” – while keeping open the possibility of natural origins.
“I’ve been on record as you know in saying I think our intelligence, our science, and our common sense all really dictates that the origins of COVID was a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Ratcliffe told Breitbart. “But the CIA has not made that assessment or at least not made that assessment publicly. So I’m going to focus on that and look at the intelligence and make sure that the public is aware that the agency is going to get off the sidelines.”
This assessment came from reviewing existing data rather than new findings, ordered during Biden’s final presidential days and completed before Trump took office.
“CIA continues to assess that both research-related and natural origin scenarios of the COVID-19 pandemic remain plausible,” stated a CIA spokesperson. “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 the CIA’s assessment.”
The announcement follows Ratcliffe’s Breitbart interview where he pushed for the agency to abandon its neutral position on the virus’s origins.
“One of the things that I’ve talked about a lot is addressing the threat from China on a number of fronts, and that goes back to why a million Americans died and why the Central Intelligence Agency has been sitting on the sidelines for five years in not making an assessment about the origins of COVID,” Ratcliffe said. “That’s a day-one thing for me.”
“I’ve been on record, as you know, in saying I think our intelligence, our science, and our common sense all really dictates that the origins of COVID was a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” he added. “But the CIA has not made that assessment or at least not made that assessment publicly. So I’m going to focus on that and look at the intelligence and make sure that the public is aware that the agency is going to get off the sidelines.”
