politics
CIA Whistleblower Claims Agency Suppressed COVID-19 Lab Leak Evidence
A career CIA operations officer told Congress that agency scientists had concluded the coronavirus likely leaked from a Chinese lab but that higher-ups suppressed those findings. The officer said the agency changed its position in 2021 and punished analysts who disagreed. The testimony came in response to a congressional subpoena as the CIA declined to explain the shift.
May 13, 12:07 PM·2m read5 sources
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A career CIA operations officer told a Senate committee that scientists at the agency had determined the coronavirus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic was likely the result of a lab leak in China. Agency leadership suppressed those conclusions and punished analysts who tried to maintain that position, the whistleblower said Wednesday.
James Erdman III, who recently completed a study of COVID-19 origins for the Director of National Intelligence, testified that as of Sept. 12, 2021, the agency was considering publicly calling the virus a lab leak. Five days later that position had changed, and the CIA has refused to say why.
He told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that some within the agency appeared eager to make excuses for China. Antipathy toward then-President Trump may also have contributed to resistance to the lab-leak possibility from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, he said.
The result was "a cover-up, wasted resources and a failure to properly inform policymakers," Erdman stated. He added that he found no explicit directive to suppress the theory but that dissenting views were shouted down. Erdman described a pattern of cross-pollination in which scientists received government funding for research and were later consulted as experts by the same government after problems arose.
He said Dr. Anthony Fauci shaped the pool of experts available to the intelligence community by recommending individuals who had already discredited the lab-leak theory. "It's not like he's saying you will go talk to them," Erdman said. " The pandemic began in early 2020 after the virus was first detected in Wuhan, China.
