US ‘let China eavesdrop on call to Raab’
US OFFICIALS deliberately held a phone call with Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab over an insecure line to allow the Chinese government to eavesdrop on their discussions about the origins of the coronavirus, Washington sources have told The Mail on Sunday.
Shortly before leaving office with President Donald Trump in January, former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo used the call to inform Mr Raab of his plan to point the finger at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, suggesting the pandemic arose following a leak from a laboratory.
A Washington source said Mr Raab had been ‘very supportive’ during the phone call, which also included the foreign ministers of Australia, Canada and New Zealand – the intelligence sharing group of nations known as Five Eyes – in late December.
The source said: ‘We did it on an open phone to ensure the Chinese could hear it. We were sending a message – we wanted to tell the Chinese. They have been prevaricating from day one, refusing to give us or you Brits any information day after day.
‘So the Secretary of State, based on the frustration between the State Department and our closest allies by the end of the year, wanted to send a clear message.’
However, a UK Government source said Mr Raab had not endorsed Mr Pompeo’s actions, and merely ‘listened as Pompeo set out what he was planning to do’.
Two weeks later, Mr Pompeo announced that US intelligence agencies had identified workers at the WIV who had fallen ill with Covid-like symptoms in autumn 2019, weeks before the alarm was raised. He also said that WIV scientists were working on secret military projects and experimenting with a bat coronavirus very similar to the one which causes Covid.
State Department officials, now reporting to Joe Biden, do not believe the virus leak was deliberate, rather that it was a catastrophic accident caused by poor safety procedures.