China rails at ‘dark history’ of US intelligence
...as Biden orders virus probe
BEIJING - China hit out at the “dark history” of the US intelligence community yesterday, after president Joe Biden ordered a probe into the Covid-19 origins.
Rejecting the need for a new investigation into the pandemic, ministry of foreign affairs spokesman Zhao Lijian said the Biden administration’s “motive and purposes are clear” while “the dark history of the US intelligence community has long been known to the world”.
President Joe Biden on Wednesday ordered US intelligence agencies to report to him in the next three months on whether the Covid-19 virus first emerged in China from an animal source or from a laboratory accident.
Agencies should “redouble their efforts to collect and analyse information that could bring us closer to a definitive conclusion, and to report back to me in 90 days,” Biden said in a statement released by the White House.
According to Biden, agencies are currently split over the two possible sources for the virus that swept the planet over the past year, killing more than 3.4 million people - a figure experts say is undoubtedly an underestimate.
Biden’s order signals an escalation in mounting controversy over how the virus first emerged - through animal contact at a market in Wuhan, China, or through release of the coronavirus from a highly secure research laboratory in the same city.
The answer has immense implications both for China, which says it is not responsible for the pandemic, and for the United States.
Representative Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, called on China to be forthcoming and for “premature or politically motivated conclusions” to be avoided.
“Beijing’s continued obstruction of a transparent, comprehensive examination of the relevant facts and data about the source of the coronavirus can only delay the vital work necessary to help the world better prepare itself before the next potential pandemic,” Schiff said.
“Nonetheless, I am confident that the (intelligence community) and other elements of our government will continue to pursue all possible leads and provide an updated, evidence-based finding in line with the president’s 90-day requirement,” he said.
The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) previously funded bat coronavirus research in Wuhan, but has denied supporting “gain of function” experiments that involve modifying a virus so that it becomes more transmissible to humans.
The grant was terminated last year by the administration of former president Donald Trump.
The lab theory has been used by opposition Republicans to attack top US scientists, including the NIH’s Anthony Fauci, and Beijing, which strongly denies the claims.
Biden said that in March he asked for a report on the origins of the virus, including “whether it emerged from human contact with an infected animal or from a laboratory accident.”
“As of today, the US intelligence community has ‘coalesced around two likely scenarios’ but has not reached a definitive conclusion on this question,” he said.
White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Biden was informed by the intelligence community of their assessment about a month ago, but it was classified information until now.
Asked about the government’s position on whether the virus was deliberately engineered to become a bioweapon, she said: “We haven’t ruled out anything yet.”
Citing a US intelligence report, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that a trio from the Wuhan Institute of Virology were hospitalised with a seasonal illness in November 2019, a month before Beijing disclosed the existence of a mysterious pneumonia outbreak.
The natural origin hypothesis holds that the virus emerged in bats then passed to humans, likely via an intermediary species.
This theory was widely accepted at the start of the pandemic, but as time has worn on, scientists have not found a virus in either bats or another animal that matches the genetic signature of SARS-CoV-2.
The United States and other countries have called for a more in-depth probe into the pandemic’s origins, after a report by an international team sent by the World Health Organization to China earlier this year proved inconclusive.
Calls from independent scientists for more transparency are also growing.