Eight Republican senators are pressing Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to provide them with the raw materials that informed the intelligence community’s latest assessment on the origins of Covid-19, according to a letter they sent Haines on Monday.
“We write to request that you immediately deliver to Congress each IC assessment used and relied upon by the Office of the Director National Intelligence (ODNI) for its consensus publications,” the senators wrote Haines, adding that they are giving Haines until March 20 to provide them with the requested information.
Earlier this year, Congress received a summary of the findings of the intelligence community’s continued investigation into the origins of Covid-19. But the Republican senators – now expressing skepticism about the summary report itself – are specifically requesting “the actual individual IC assessments” instead of a summary of what those assessments found.
The request was prompted by a recent low confidence assessment from the Department of Energy that Covid-19 most likely originated from a laboratory leak in China. The assessment – which matches a moderate confidence finding by the FBI – remains the minority view within the intelligence community, but it has reanimated a debate over the origins of the worldwide pandemic.
“DNI Haines currently faces a critical decision – whether to be transparent with Congress and stop obstructing the agencies involved in the IC assessment from turning over their results or continue to hide key details from the American people and their elected officials. There are many questions about ODNI’s process that must be answered. Was it tainted by outside experts who had conflicts of interest? Why was Congress not updated in real time with new assessments? I will continue to seek the truth for Kansans and all Americans,” Sen. Roger Marshall, a…
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