On Saturday, new CIA Director john Ratcliffe made public the CIA’s reassessment that shifts from an inconclusive position to now believing the lab-leak was most likely despite a low level of confidence.
Beijing dismissed the CIA's claim that COVID-19 likely originated from a lab, calling it “extremely unlikely.” The Chinese government pointed to findings from the China-WHO joint expert team, which concluded that a lab leak was highly improbable.
The Central Intelligence Agency previously said that two explanations were plausible, a lab leak or a natural source for the virus. Yet under new agency director John Ratcliffe, the CIA has changed its view, which is now in line with that of the Department of Energy and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The news comes after the CIA announced over the weekend that COVID-19 most likely originated from a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2020.
The problem for the lab-leak position is that the U.S. has never had access to the Wuhan lab and has thus been unable to reach a definitive answer for more than five years. Now that the CIA has at last come to a conclusion, not all scientists are sold on what it has reported, seeing the results as thinly scientifically sourced.
The Central Intelligence Agency with a "low confidence" has changed its stance and concluded that it's likely the COVI-19 virus was leaked from a Chinese lab before it became a global pandemic five years ago.
CIA concludes Covid-19 likely originated from China lab leak - The assessment was published this weekend on orders from Trump-appointed spy chief John Ratcliffe
The Show Me State vows to seize $25 billion in Chinese assets if Beijing doesn't pay damages related to the outbreak of COVID-19.
New director Ratcliffe releases a judgment Biden had kept secret.
It was unclear the extent to which the agency has collected new intelligence on COVID-19's origins and whether that new evidence was used to formulate the latest assessment.
She was responding to a question on a federal indictment which alleged that an “Indian government employee” directed an assassination attempt against a Sikh activist, who is a US citizen, in New York City in the spring of 2023,