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US officials released an intelligence report on Friday that dismisses some points made by those who argue that COVID-19 was leaked from a Chinese lab, instead stressing that US spy agencies remain divided over how the pandemic began.
The report was issued at the request of Congress, which in March passed a bill giving US intelligence 90 days to declassify intelligence related to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Intelligence officials under President Joe Biden have been pushed by lawmakers to release more material about the origins of COVID-19. But they have repeatedly argued that official China’s obstruction of independent reviews has made it impossible to say how the pandemic began.
The latest report has angered some Republicans who argue the administration is wrongly withholding classified information and researchers who accuse the United States of not responding.
John Ratcliffe, who served as US Director of National Intelligence under former President Donald Trump, accused the Biden administration of “constant obfuscation.” “The lab leak is the only theory supported by science, intelligence and common sense,” Ratcliffe said in a statement.
There was new interest from researchers after revelations earlier this year that the Department of Energy’s intelligence arm had issued a report alleging a lab-related incident.
But Friday’s report said the intelligence community had gone no further. Four agencies still believe the virus was transmitted from animals to humans, and two agencies — the Department of Energy and the FBI — believe the virus may have leaked from a laboratory. The CIA and other agencies have not made any assessments.
The Wuhan Institute of Virology, located in the city where the epidemic is believed to have started, has faced intense scrutiny for its previous research on bat viruses and reported security holes.
The report said the lab genetically modified viruses as part of its research, including efforts to combine different viruses.
But the report says US intelligence “has no information, however, to indicate that any WIV genetic engineering work involved SARS-CoV-2, a close strain, or a backbone virus closely related enough to be the source of the epidemic.” The report notes that reports that several researchers in laboratories developed respiratory symptoms in the fall of 2019 are also inconclusive.
The report said US intelligence “continues to assess that this information neither supports nor refute any hypothesis of the origins of the pandemic because the researchers’ symptoms may have been caused by a number of diseases and some of the symptoms are inconsistent with COVID-19.”
In response to the report, the Republican chairs of the House Intelligence Committee and a select subcommittee on the pandemic jointly said they had gathered information in favor of the lab leak hypothesis.
Representatives Mike Turner and Brad Weinstrup, both of Ohio, credited the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence for taking a “promising step toward transparency.”
“While we appreciate the ODNI report, all available evidence must continue to be supported along with further investigation into the origins of COVID-19,” Turner and Weinstrup said.
But Alina Chan, a molecular biologist who has long argued that the virus may have originated in a Wuhan lab, noted that the public version of the report did not include the names of researchers who contracted the disease or other details mandated by Congress.
The bill requiring the review allowed intelligence officials to publicly redact information to protect the agency’s sources and methods.
“It becomes so hard to believe that the government is not trying to hide what they know about #OriginOfCovid when you see a report like this that contains none of the required information,” Chan wrote on Twitter.
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