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The Central Intelligence Agency has thrown its weight behind the lab leak theory as the most plausible origin of COVID-19.
Without providing details about why the spy agency was changing its position, the CIA informed reporters of its new position on Saturday, just two days after John Ratcliffe was sworn in as the new director.
“We have low confidence in this judgement and will continue to evaluate any available credible new intelligence reporting or open-source information that could change CIA’s assessment,” a CIA spokesperson told reporters, per Politico.
The CIA’s shift in assessment does not appear to be based on any significant new evidence.
On his way out, former CIA Director William Burns had called on the agency to take a stance on COVID-19’s origins instead of staying neutral, sources told the Wall Street Journal.
Under Ratcliffe’s watch, the CIA decided to declassify that assessment.
Ratcliffe, 59, who served as the director of national intelligence (DNI) under the first Trump administration, had long favored the lab leak theory.
Now Langley joins the FBI and Energy Department, which runs a slew of labs and research facilities across the US in its assessment, in agreeing that a lab leak is the most likely origin.
Four other agencies still back the zoonotic theory — that the highly contagious virus naturally mutated from bats to infect humans, likely via intermediary like pangolins. The National Intelligence Council, a group of top intelligence officials that reports to the DNI also backed the zoonotic theory.
Key scientists including former COVID-19 czar Dr. Anthony Fauci have favored the zoonotic theory.
Some virologists had conducted studies that concluded the virus could have come from a wet market in Wuhan where live animals were sold for food.
However, the exact animal that may have been the link for the virus getting to humans has never been identified.
Proponents of the lab leak theory, which had once been scorned as a conspiracy theory, have pointed to US-funded the research on coronaviruses and bats that had been conducted at the Wuhan Institute Of Virology, close to the wet market where COVID-19 was first publicly reported.
The first known cases of COVID-19 in humans came in Wuhan in November 2019. Some 1.2 million Americans were died in the COVID-19 pandemic, per data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Ratcliffe had previously made clear to Breitbart News that he also wanted the CIA to take a clear position on the origins of COVID-19.
“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,” he said. “
“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 during his interview with the outlet.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) praised the CIA for its new assessment.
“I’m pleased the CIA concluded in the final days of the Biden administration that the lab-leak theory is the most plausible explanation of Covid’s origins,” Cotton wrote on X.
“I commend Director Ratcliffe for fulfilling his promise to release this conclusion. Now, the most important thing is to make China pay for unleashing a plague on the world.”
China has denied the lab leak theory.
The Post has contacted the CIA for comment.
