A classified intelligence report recently delivered to Congress included the Energy Department’s assessment that it is “likely” that Covid-19 first spread after a laboratory leak in Wuhan, China, two sources with direct knowledge told NBC News.
That’s likely to be a major topic of conversation for the first hearing of the House Oversight Committee’s new Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. Tuesday’s roundtable ostensibly will focus on speaking to doctors about policy decisions made during the crisis, but the panel’s Republican members are sure to highlight the lab leak theory. Despite their likely enthusiasm, though, the Energy Department assessment is not the smoking gun they’ve been hunting for the last three years.
The Energy Department assessment is not the smoking gun Republicans have been hunting for the last three years.
The prevailing theory is that the coronavirus that causes the disease known as Covid-19 first emerged in a Wuhan market where live animals were sold. This thesis has been published in multiple credible sources, including the journal Science last year. The lab leak theory, on the other hand, posits that the virus was a version of the SARS coronavirus that was studied and/or manipulated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology before escaping. There is substantially less evidence available to back that theory, but the U.S. intelligence community still cautions that “there is not a definitive answer,” as White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN on Sunday.
(A spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs seemed to reject the Energy Department’s reported findings, saying that “relevant sides should stop hyping up the lab leak theory and stop smearing China and politicizing the origin tracing issue.”)
For those curious as to why the Energy Department has any skin in the game here, its Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence is one of the 18 offices and agencies that make up the intelligence…
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