Information in a federal report that pointed to the COVID-19 virus being leaked from a Chinese laboratory rather than coming from nature was "silenced" from being included in discussions with President Joe Biden and in a final report in May 2021, according to sources close to the situation.
As a result, the report concluded that the virus that caused the pandemic likely was not genetically engineered at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but had come from nature, reports the New York Post on Friday.
The "zoonotic origin" theory on the virus had been backed by several people in the public health establishment including Dr. Anthony Fauci, the then-director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Biden's chief medical adviser.
According to an analysis by three scientists from the Defense Intelligence Agency's National Center for Medical Intelligence, the agency tasked with examining the potential of biological weapons threats and dangerous infectious diseases, there were several findings that were linked to China, The Wall Street Journal first reported Thursday.
The analysis, conducted by John Hardham, Robert Cutlip, and Jean-Paul Chretien discovered:
- The "spike protein" that allowed the COVID virus to invade human cells had been described in a Chinese paper in 2008. The protein was developed at the Wuhan Institute.
- Dr. Shi Zhengli at the WIV and her virologists trained on techniques at a laboratory in Galveston, Texas to make a coronavirus genome with "seamless assembly."
- Chinese military researcher Zhou Yusen, who worked with the WIV, had applied for a COVID vaccine patent on Feb. 24, 2020, even though SARS-CoV-2 was reportedly not fully sequenced until the end of January 2020. He later died from a fall from the roof at the Wuhan laboratory.
But the information was not included when Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines prepared her report on the pandemic's origins, which Biden had ordered in May 2021.
"The scientists who had the subject matter expertise were silenced," one source told the New York Post, adding that Biden and others had remained "completely unwitting" that the virus had likely been leaked from a laboratory.
In addition, national spy chiefs blocked the scientists from sharing their information with Congress or rebutting a May 2020 paper seeking to discredit the theory that the virus had been leaked.
The three scientists were also told not to share the findings with the FBI, the only intelligence agency that had concluded the lab leak theory was the only valid origin for the pandemic, the Post's sources said.
FBI scientist Jason Bannan and his team were not invited to the White House briefing. He told The Wall Street Journal that his superiors told him to be ready if the FBI was asked to join the intelligence briefing for Biden, and he finds it "surprising that the White House didn't ask."
"Being the only agency that assessed that a laboratory origin was more likely, and the agency that expressed the highest level of confidence in its analysis of the source of the pandemic, we anticipated the FBI would be asked to attend the briefing," he said.
Haines informed Biden that the intelligence community overwhelmingly believed the virus had jumped from animals to humans, which four intelligence agencies and the National Intelligence Council, which she supervised had backed, reports The Wall Street Journal. The CIA and two other agencies kept a more neutral stance on the likely origins of the virus.
A Director of National Intelligence Office spokesperson told the Journal that typically, officials from several different agencies do not show up at presidential briefings, but insisted that different perspectives had been offered.
Bannan, however, said that he believes the failure to present all evidence means there must be a deeper look into the origins of the pandemic, and that "what ended up on the intelligence community’s cutting-room floor needs to be re-examined."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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