The CIA announced that they believe that the COVID-19 virus likely originated from an accidental lab leak in China instead of it occurring naturally.
The governmental organization released a statement today (Jan. 25), which came days after its new director, John Ratcliffe, stepped into the role. The agency had previously maintained for years that it didn’t have enough information to determine what theory was more likely to be true.
This new statement is considered to be a “low confidence” judgment — but the organization also believes that COVID-19 could still possibly have a natural-origin scenario.
“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,” Ratcliffe told the right-wing platform Breitbart. “But the CIA has not made that assessment or at least not made that assessment publicly. So I’m going to focus on that and look at the intelligence and make sure that the public is aware that the agency is going to get off the sidelines.”
The CIA’s decision was reached after reviewing the existing information that they had about the virus — not because of a new discovery. The review was ordered at the end of Joe Biden’s presidency and was completed prior to President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
“CIA continues to assess that both research-related and natural origin scenarios of the COVID-19 pandemic remain plausible,” said a CIA spokesperson in a statement.“We have low confidence in this judgment and will continue to evaluate any available credible new intelligence reporting or open-source information that could change the CIA’s assessment.”
The CIA’s new assessment about the origin of the virus that causes COVID-19 comes a day after Director Ratcliffe told Breitbart that he wanted the organization to “get off the sidelines” and drop its neutral stance about how the virus originated.
“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,” Ratcliffe said. “That’s a day-one thing for me.”
“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. “But the CIA has not made that assessment or at least not made that assessment publicly. So I’m going to focus on that and look at the intelligence and make sure that the public is aware that the agency is going to get off the sidelines.”