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China ties in question: New CIA director John Ratcliffe favours the lab leak theory and has said it is a critical piece of intelligence that has consequences for US-China ties
WASHINGTON: The CIA has said for years that it did not have enough information to conclude whether the Covid-19 pandemic emerged naturally from a wet market in Wuhan, China, or from an accidental leak at a research lab there.
But the agency issued a new assessment this past week, with analysts saying they now favour the lab theory. There is no new intelligence behind the agency's shift, officials said. Rather, it is based on the same evidence it has been chewing on for months.
The analysis, however, is based in part on a closer look at the conditions in the high-security labs in Wuhan province before the pandemic outbreak, according to people familiar with the agency's work. A spokesperson said the other theory remains plausible and that the agency will continue to evaluate any available credible new intelligence reporting. The agency made its new assessment with "low confidence", which means the intelligence behind it is fragmentary and incomplete.
Some officials say the debate matters little: Beijing failed to either regulate its markets or oversee its labs. But others argue it is an important intelligence and scientific question. John Ratcliffe, the new director of the CIA, has long favoured the lab leak hypothesis. He has said it is a critical piece of intelligence that has consequences for US-Chinese ties. The announcement of the shift came shortly after Ratcliffe told Breitbart News he no longer wanted the agency "on the sidelines" of the debate. Ratcliffe has long said he believes that the virus most likely emerged from
Wuhan Institute of Virology
.
Officials said the agency was not bending its views to a new boss. In the final weeks of the Biden administration, NSA Jake Sullivan ordered a new classified review of the pandemic's origin. As part of that review, the agency's previous director, William Burns, told analysts that they needed to take a position on the origins, though he was agnostic on which theory they should embrace, a senior US intelligence official said. Another senior official said it was Ratcliffe's decision to declassify and release the new analysis.
Republican Tom Cotton, the new chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, praised the shift. "Now the most important thing is to make China pay for unleashing a plague on the world," he said.
