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CIA Reverses Itself, Acknowledging COVID Likely Originated from a Wuhan Lab

CIA Reverses Itself, Acknowledging COVID Likely Originated from a Wuhan Lab

New CIA Director John Ratcliffe went straight to work on behalf of the American people by releasing a new assessment on the origins of Covid-19.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZC0gww2yznI

What a difference an inauguration makes!

This week, President Donald Trump’s pick for the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency was sworn in.

Director John Ratcliffe went straight to work on behalf of the American people by releasing a new position on the origins of Covid-19.

The CIA now has shifted its assessment regarding the origins of covid, now favoring the lab leak theory as the most likely explanation for the pandemic’s start. On Saturday, the agency released a new evaluation indicating a preference for the laboratory leak hypothesis over the natural origin theory, reversing the position it has held sense the first cases of covid in this country were reported.

The CIA now believes the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic most likely originated from a laboratory, according to an assessment released Saturday that points the finger at China — even while acknowledging that the spy agency has “low confidence” in its own conclusion.

The finding is not the result of any new intelligence, and the report was completed at the behest of the Biden administration and former CIA Director William Burns. It was declassified and released Saturday on the orders of President Trump’s pick to lead the agency, John Ratcliffe, who was sworn in Thursday as director.

The nuanced finding suggests the agency believes the totality of evidence makes a lab origin more likely than a natural origin. But the agency’s assessment assigns a low degree of confidence to this conclusion, suggesting the evidence is deficient, inconclusive or contradictory.

I will simply note the “low degree of confidence” is simply the organization’s way to cover its posterior, as the lab leak origin has always been the most reasonable and most likely origin of the novel coronavirus…as most Legal Insurrection readers will already know.

One month before the country locked-down for “two weeks to stop the spread”, I reported what most U.S. media ignored or marginalized, how Chinese university researchers believe virus may originate from government laboratory (February 16, 2020):

While most early reports indicated a market close to Wuhan was the source of the original COVID-19 infections, there was skepticism about this theory.

Sen. Tom Cotton suggested that Chinese officials misled the public on the origins of the novel coronavirus that has killed at least 362 people and infected more than 17,400 others, saying it may have originated in a “superlaboratory.” ….

If the market was not the source of the pathogen, what was? Researchers at the Beijing-sponsored South China University of Technology now conclude that the coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan….

The full report is here, including this conclusion:

In summary, somebody was entangled with the evolution of 2019-nCoV coronavirus. In addition to origins of natural recombination and intermediate host, the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan. Safety level may need to be reinforced in high risk biohazardous laboratories. Regulations may be taken to relocate these laboratories far away from city center and other densely populated places.

If you read Legal Insurrection, you would have known about this Chinese university study. (Yes, we archived it, so the link to the report still works.)

I later also reported how China Destroyed Evidence of Wuhan Coronavirus in December (March 20, 2020).

Per “Occam’s Razor”: The simplest answer is usually the most correct.  Which is easier to believe: Chinese researchers, using unsafe laboratory practices in a facility that had waste maintenance problems was the epicenter, or someone failed to cook the pangolin long enough in a Wuhan kitchen?

The only question is was this leak accidental (which I believe it was), or something more nefarious.  And while we may never know the sequence of events leading to the first cases of covid, perhaps the CIA under Ratcliffe can focus on preventing another lab-created virus from harming the American people again rather that controlling social media from concerned Americans.

My February 2020 assessment was continuously supported by other findings, especially a tell-tale genetic signature that is indicative of genetic splicing-and-dicing.

As Professor Jacobson noted in his tweet, our highly accurate coverage at Legal Insurrection was suppressed in social media at every turn.  Still, we persisted.

Now, like DEI, the tide has turned and we have been proven correct in our assessment.

Interestingly, Trump is now planning an executive order prohibiting the type of “gain of function” research that likely created covid in the first place.

The Trump administration is preparing an executive order that would halt federal funding, at least temporarily, for a risky and controversial kind of research into viruses that makes the pathogens more dangerous or contagious.

The goal of the order would be to stop scientists with U.S. funding from conducting “gain-of-function” research on viruses that could endanger human health, people familiar with the plans said.

This declaration would align with his other order, putting a pause on communication, travel, and grants on the agencies dealing with health — the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control, and the National Institutes of Health.  The free-wheeling, rule-making bureaucracies filled with “experts” are going to be reined-in.

The CIA’s reversal is another sign that, in the words of Watts Up with That moderator Charles Rotter, “Science is being rescued—from itself“.

Meanwhile, I am going to add more coins into my jar.

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Comments

Mitch McConnell’s wife is not going to like this. I hope he didn’t vote for Ratcliffe or he will be in big trouble when he gets home.

After 6 years of cover up now they kind of own up to the real cause.
Fauci needs to get under the spotlight soon.


     
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    henrybowman in reply to Skip. | January 25, 2025 at 11:33 pm

    In other news, the CIA now admits that Generalissimo Francisco Franco is dead.


       
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      ThePrimordialOrderedPair in reply to henrybowman. | January 26, 2025 at 1:21 am

      It’s not really “now admits”. This was released only because Radcliffe is in there, now.

      We are going to get the CIA back. Their current propaganda is going to be corrected and they are going to get back to doing what they are supposed to be doing.

        Does anyone actually know what the CIA is supposed to be doing? 🤔


           
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          ThePrimordialOrderedPair in reply to mailman. | January 26, 2025 at 4:01 am

          Espionage, killing enemies outside of American territory, and carrying out acts that serve our interests, regardless of considerations of local legality.

          Serving America’s security interests outside of American sovereign territory, unhampered by the Constitution or American law (neither of which extend past our boundaries).


         
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        DaveGinOly in reply to ThePrimordialOrderedPair. | January 26, 2025 at 10:08 am

        This is directed towards TPOP’s post below.

        Serving America’s security interests outside of American sovereign territory, unhampered by the Constitution or American law (neither of which extend past our boundaries).

        I’d argue it certainly does extend beyond our boundaries. Our government is bound by the Constitution. It constrains our government anywhere it operates. I think one of the things the CIA should not be doing is direct action of any sort. This is what allows it to get into trouble, gathering (and just as important, assessing) its own intelligence and then acting on it, sometimes without authorization of higher authority and without oversight. It has proven that it can’t be trusted with all of these roles. Intelligence collection should be separated from assessment, and both of these roles should be divorced from any authority to take direct action. Having all three roles wrapped up in a single agency permits it to operate according to its own agenda, rather than the agenda of elected officials.


           
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          ThePrimordialOrderedPair in reply to DaveGinOly. | January 26, 2025 at 10:23 am

          It constrains our government anywhere it operates.

          I have to strenuously disagree with this. Our Constitution has no meaning, impact, or enforcement outside of American territory. It is limited. Outside of America is a lawless land, from our Constitution’s point of view.

          The US government is not bound by the Constitution in foreign territory. We can respect other countries laws, for their territories, but that is still our choice.

          American governance only applies to America and the only real interests of American governance in America concerns Americans.

          As to having different sorts of operations abroad split among different agencies, that is just detail. Things should be done in that realm and there is a need for agencies to do those things, whether you think they should be doable through a single agency or split up.


           
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          DaveGinOly in reply to DaveGinOly. | January 26, 2025 at 3:54 pm

          Again, in response to TPOP.
          So it was OK for Obama to extra-judicially kill (at least) two Americans operating as terrorists on foreign soil?
          Can the US government torture detainees, so long as it does it extra-terrotorially?
          Can it arrest, without a warrant, a US citizen on foreign soil and then detain that citizen indefinitely without charge?
          Can an agency of the US commit an act of war and/or war crimes against foreign nationals on their own soil, the former without the consent of Congress and the latter in the teeth of any international agreements to which the US is a signatory or de facto signatory?
          I understand why you would think the US government can operated extra-constitutionally outside of its borders, but that’s only because is does so, not because it’s so empowered. Nothing in the Constitution empowers any US elected or appointed office-holder or other official to act in any wise outside of the constraints of the Constitution anywhere. Authority the Constitution does not grant is authority the government does not have. This is a maxim of our form of constitutional government.


       
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      lichau in reply to henrybowman. | January 27, 2025 at 6:45 pm

      With a low level of confidence.

The only question is was this leak accidental (which I believe it was), or something more nefarious.

The accidental leaks theory seems the most likely to me as well.

If you want a laugh go to the Wikipedia page for the Wuhan Institute of Virology. That webpage is one of the clumsiest and least convincing pieces of Chicom propaganda you will ever encounter.

I’m reading Rand Paul’s book “Deception.” They knew. They all knew from the beginning. Complete arrogance to believe they could conceal the truth, especially when virologists worldwide found the infamous furin cleavage site and concluded that it could not have occurred in nature.


     
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    ThePrimordialOrderedPair in reply to bev. | January 26, 2025 at 1:18 am

    We all knew from the beginning. Everyone with a brain knew from the beginning. The stories about the first sicknesses having been people at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were known. And then one of their researchers disappeared and another, Zhou Yousen, fell off of a roof.


     
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    mailman in reply to bev. | January 26, 2025 at 3:49 am

    All they needed to do was to conceal it long enough to complete the deposing of a sitting President, which they accomplished.


       
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      bev in reply to mailman. | January 26, 2025 at 4:08 am

      Although Fauci was certainly no fan of Trump, concealing the origin of Covid wasn’t about Trump. It was self-preservation. If the theory that Covid was leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology was widely accepted, then the fact that GOF research there was being funded by Fauci through Ecohealth Alliance would be implicated as the cause of 7 million deaths worldwide.


         
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        mailman in reply to bev. | January 26, 2025 at 4:46 pm

        The Democrats sole reason for existing post 2016 was to remove Trump either by use of lawfare or what ever else they could leverage for their benefit.

        Covid came along at the right time and was a golden opportunity that fell in to their laps when they most needed and boy, did Democrats take full advantage at every opportunity to use Covid to change the ways people voted, both for the living AND the dead.

        Having the intelligence agencies coming out and blaming Covid and the 40 guadzillion American Covid deaths on China would have bolstered Trump no end leading in to the election.

        It also would have derailed Democrats vote by mail fraud and a lot of dead people’s votes would not have been counted.


     
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    gibbie in reply to bev. | January 26, 2025 at 10:33 am

    Even John Stewart knew.


 
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ghost dog | January 26, 2025 at 1:00 am

Conspiracy theorists 62-0.


 
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ThePrimordialOrderedPair | January 26, 2025 at 1:15 am

The only question is was this leak accidental (which I believe it was), or something more nefarious.

Actually, that question is irrelevant. What is KNOWN is that once the virus was loose in China, they cut Wuhan off from the rest of China but still allowed international travel in and out of Wuhan. In fact, the Chinese Communists went even further than merely “allowing” international travel in and out of Wuhan but actually attacked countries (like the US) that tried to place restrictions on travel with Wuhan, calling them (us) racists and the like.

The fact is that the Chinese Communist scum INTENTIONALLY spread the Wuhan virus to the world and that was an Act of War against each every country, specifically the United States. That is true regardless of how the virus initially came to be and got into the Chinese population. Once it was in there the Chinese government used it as a bio-weapon and attacked the world, with full intent.

Then, they got lucky and the Communists in America decided that the best thing to do in the face of a pandemic (and we have had them before) was to throw away American law and American tradition and to copy the Communist Chinese in placing the entire citizenry under effective house arrest, with little carve-outs to friends and donors and the whim of our many petit dictators. Those people, in America, have yet to pay anything for their terrible and completely un-American and un-Constitutional assaults on the citizenry, including their parts in the many SERIOUS insurrection attempts made by the left in the summer of 2020 …

    Ten thumbs up. They was no way the Chinese were going to be the ones primarily affected. I recall reporting that an area in Italy with many Chinese had a major early outbreak.


     
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    DaveGinOly in reply to ThePrimordialOrderedPair. | January 26, 2025 at 4:03 pm

    Of course it’s relevant. It’s relevant to determining the actual source of the virus (from which it escaped/was released, take your pick) and to making sure that an escape (at least) doesn’t happen again.

    How and why the Chinese may have (and probably did) allow the virus to cripple the world is a separate matter, with its own relevance that in no way diminishes the relevance of whether it was released intentionally or not. (Although I think any theory of Chinese intent to allow the virus to spread is inconsistent with a claim it was intentionally released. An intentional release would have been conducted in a manner to be less likely to point directly at the WIV, and therefore directly at the Chinese government. Although I also believe the WIV was located where it was because the nearby Wuhan wet market would give them plausible deniability in the event of an escape. However the Chinese had the misfortune of mishandling a virus that practically screamed “engineered.” They might have gotten away with it if the accident had occurred with a similarly dangerous, but natural virus.)


     
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    Evil Otto in reply to ThePrimordialOrderedPair. | January 28, 2025 at 6:08 am

    ^This. Based on everything I’ve read this was likely an accidental release, probably of a virus that ‘wasn’t ready for prime time.’ But the Chinese intentionally allowed it to spread and the governments of other nations went all in on restrictions. It was like Christmas for every power-hungry person on earth.

Once again it is mis-dis info conspiracy theory being 100% correct.


 
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mailman | January 26, 2025 at 3:51 am

“The CIA now believes…”

No, the CIA always knew.


     
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    henrybowman in reply to mailman. | January 26, 2025 at 4:19 am

    Well, maybe not.
    The CIA misses a lot of things.
    The CIA had no idea the Berlin Wall was coming down.
    The CIA had no idea the USSR was disintegrating.


       
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      ThePrimordialOrderedPair in reply to henrybowman. | January 26, 2025 at 4:23 am

      The CIA had no idea the Berlin Wall was coming down.

      True, but they did manage to understand that it was down once they saw the rubble.


       
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      Joe-dallas in reply to henrybowman. | January 26, 2025 at 10:32 am

      Actually – it was well known inside the CIA that USSR was internally crumbling during the Reagan adminstration.

      I suspect a large contingent of the CIA knew Covid came from a lab leak, but chose to suppress that knowldedge for political purposes.


         
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        Joe-dallas in reply to Joe-dallas. | January 26, 2025 at 10:34 am

        I will also add that the CIA knows/knew during the obuma administration that IRAN was not complying with the nuclear deal which is likewise contrary to the public pronouncements.


 
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bobinreverse | January 26, 2025 at 4:33 am

Kinda hard to draw conclusion until you find out what the 51 former Incelligence officers have concluded.


 
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diver64 | January 26, 2025 at 6:13 am

Huh. What do you do when all of your “conspiracy theories” turn out to be true?


 
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E Howard Hunt | January 26, 2025 at 7:31 am

It is not in the nature for stealthy, seemingly extralegal, national security agencies to issue helpful and truthful public announcements. Obviously, the United States was skirting domestic law and using China as a vehicle for dangerous viral research. That is why the story was denied originally. The new take allows Trump to appear vindicated, while being ambivalent enough to allow the episode to slowly dissolve from memory..


     
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    henrybowman in reply to E Howard Hunt. | January 26, 2025 at 5:30 pm

    The American mind is now more focused than that. Whether vindication is or is not attained will depend entirely on someone or someones receiving actual punishment. And mere resignations/firings will not suffice.


 
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guyjones | January 26, 2025 at 7:56 am

Great. The next revelation will be that the Wuhan virus release was an intentional bioweapon attack/test run to gauge western reaction; not an “accidental” release.


     
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    guyjones in reply to guyjones. | January 26, 2025 at 7:58 am

    To gauge western governments’ reaction, with the defeat of #45’s re-election bid and the installation of corrupt, incompetent, pliable, meek and compromised crime boss/dotard, Biden, in the White House, as an ancillary benefit.

https://iv.iiarjournals.org/content/35/3/1313

On the Origin of SARS-CoV-2: Did Cell Culture Experiments Lead to Increased Virulence of the Progenitor Virus for Humans?

BERND KAINA
In Vivo May 2021, 35 (3) 1313-1326; DOI: https://doi.org/10.21873/invivo.12384

…it is highly unlikely that the selection occurred in bats or in an intermediate animal host. However, a scenario seems likely, according to which the selection for a highly infectious agent took place in human cells, notably in cell culture, as a byproduct of virus propagation and experimental work.

“It should be emphasized again that the laboratory hypothesis does not posit that SARS-CoV-2 was genetically engineered on purpose, in simple words “a laboratory construct”. The hypothesis rather states that SARS-CoV-2 is an unintended byproduct of gain-of-function and cotransfection/cotransduction experiments using human (genetically engineered) cell lines in vitro. Selection occurred during virus propagation for a bat virus that is best equipped with tools using supportive factors of human cells and therefore best adapted to humans. There are many conceivable scenarios how transmission could occur in the laboratory, e.g. through aerosols during the work or during handling of waste. Such laboratory events could have occurred repeatedly long before December 2019.

I would like to point out that this was -published in a Journal- in May 2021. This means that given time for writing, review, submission, review, and acceptance, it was clear during mid 2020 the virus was from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

If this publication knew, the CIA knew.

When has the CIA got anything correct?


 
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Kepha H | January 30, 2025 at 9:03 pm

Official Chinese obfuscation and trying to pass the blame to visiting US officers is enough to convince me it was probably a leak from a lab.

As for the market thesis, I never believed it for a moment. I spent many years living in the Far East (Taiwan, Thailand, Guangzhou), and often passed through the sorts of markets said to have been the source of the pathogen, and remained reasonably healthy.

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