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WASHINGTON — American intelligence agencies have been unable to determine whether the coronavirus pandemic was the result of an accidental leak from a laboratory or whether it emerged more naturally, according to declassified portions of a report submitted to the White House on Friday.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence said the country’s spy agencies are unlikely to reach a conclusion without further cooperation or a new source of information from China.
As the debate about the origins of the pandemic intensifies, Mr. Biden ordered the country’s intelligence agencies three months ago to prepare a report on the source of the virus.
After review, the National Intelligence Council and four other intelligence community elements reported that they believed the virus that caused Covid was most likely caused by “natural exposure to an infected animal, either through an infected animal or progenitor virus.”
Only two institutions supported the natural exposure theory before it was reviewed. But the new report said it had only low confidence in the conclusions of the intelligence council and other agencies that support the natural theory – a sign that the intelligence behind the assessment was not strong and results could vary.
On the other side of the debate, one agency said it concluded with moderate confidence that the pandemic was the result of a “lab-related event.” According to the declassified report, analysts at that institution weighed in on the risky nature of working on coronaviruses. The agency also said the accident was likely related to “experiment, animal treatment, or sampling by the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
Before the pandemic, there were two laboratories working on the coronavirus in Wuhan, but intelligence agencies mostly focused on the work done at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The announcement from the director of national intelligence did not identify the agency that supported the theory of the lab leak. But current and former officials said the FBI believes the virus was created in the lab. A former official said the bureau believes the virus probably escaped from lab technicians to the public.
Intelligence agencies all agree that the virus is unlikely to be created as any biological weapon, with the same stance the US government has held for more than a year. The agencies also agree that the first exposures to cause the outbreak occurred “no later than November 2019,” according to the declassified results.
The report said that American intelligence officials, critical of the debate over the origins of the virus, do not believe that Chinese officials knew about it during the outbreak.
“The IC assesses that the Chinese authorities had no prior knowledge of the virus before the first outbreak of Covid-19 occurred,” using the intelligence community’s initials in the declassified report.
The quarterly review, commissioned by Mr. Biden, was done to bring more scientific expertise to the study of the origins of the pandemic. Intelligence agencies used three months to examine an incompletely scanned data treasury.
These data from the Wuhan Institute of Virology did not provide any additional information that convinced any additional agencies that a lab leak was possible.
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