The CIA said on Saturday that the agency concluded that the Kofid-19 pandemic had arisen in a Chinese laboratory and not in nature.
A spokesman for the agency said in a statement that “CIA” continues to evaluate that both scenarios related to research and naturally, the Cofide-19, are still potential.
He added: “We have low confidence in this ruling, and we will continue to evaluate any reliable new intelligence reports or information available from open sources that may change the agency’s evaluation.”
According to the Associated Press, this conclusion is not the result of any new intelligence information, but a senior American official said that former agency director William Burns asked analysts and scientists at the intelligence agency in recent weeks to manage Joe Biden to make a clear decision in this regard, stressing the historical importance of the epidemic. The secrecy was removed from the report and published on Saturday based on the orders of John Ratcliffe, chosen by President Donald Trump to lead the CIA, and the oath performed on Thursday as its director.
This precise conclusion indicates that the agency believes that the overall evidence makes the laboratory origin a more likely probability than the natural origin. However, the agency’s evaluation devotes low confidence that “the research origin is the most likely Kofid-19,” indicating that the evidence is insufficient, inconclusive or contradictory.
In its statement, the agency indicated that both possibilities – the laboratory and nature – are still standing.
The agency had said for years that it could not conclude whether the pandemic was as a result of an accident in a laboratory or that it grew up in nature.
The depth of the new intelligence collected by the agency was not clear about the origin of the Kofid-19 and whether this new guide was used to formulate the latest evaluation.
The Chinese embassy in Washington has not yet received a request for comment.
The Chinese government says it supports and participates in research to determine the origin of Kovid-19, and has accused Washington of politicizing the issue, especially because of the efforts made by US intelligence agencies to investigate.
Beijing said that the accusations that a leakage of one of its laboratories may have caused the pandemic to have no credibility.
Ratcliffe statements
In an interview with the Praya News Platform after the US Senate confirmed his appointment on Friday, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Ratcliffe, said, “One of the things that he talked about is to address the threat from China on several fronts, and this brings us back to the cause of the death of a million Americans and why the agency remained Central intelligence on the margin for a period of five years without providing an evaluation on the assets of the Corona virus, noting that one of its first priorities is to conduct the agency for a general evaluation of the origin of this pandemic.
“This is something that should happen on the first day for me. I have already said that I believe that our intelligence, our knowledge, and our good improvement say that the Kofid-19 origins were from the leakage of the Wuhan Institute for Virus.”
He pointed out that his role is to provide President Trump with the necessary facts and intelligence information about China to be ready when negotiating and communicating with Chinese President Xi Jinping, effectively, and in order to ensure the success of the talks and decisions.
Ratcliffe also emphasized that US foreign policy and intelligence institutions were late in understanding the threats of China to the United States, due to its long -term focus on the Cold War with Russia. He explained that this focus was late in adapting to the fact that China, not Russia, is the greatest geopolitical threat.
He said, “China has the second largest economy in the world, and we compete at all levels in a way that Russia cannot achieve. But unfortunately, there are financial aspects of this delay in focusing on China, as many major institutions in Washington, Wall Street, Silicon Valley and Hollywood seek to preserve Its relations with China for financial reasons. “
It is noteworthy that the previous reports on the assets of the Kofid-19 were divided on whether the virus had arisen from a Chinese laboratory, perhaps by mistake, or whether it had appeared normally. The new evaluation is unlikely to resolve this controversy. In fact, intelligence officials say that a final solution may never be reached, given the lack of cooperation of the Chinese authorities.
While the origin of the virus is still unknown, scientists believe that the most likely hypothesis is that it has spread among the bats, such as many Corona viruses, before moving to another type of animal, possibly possible dogs, cocks or mice cats. From there, the infection moved to humans who dealt with these animals or slaughtered them in a market in Wuhan, where the first human cases with the virus appeared in late November 2019.
However, some official investigations raised questions about whether the virus had leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan. Two years ago, a report issued by the Ministry of Energy concluded that a laboratory leak was the most likely origin, although the report also referred to low confidence in this conclusion.