CIA considers a lab leak to be the most plausible source of Covid-19, although with low confidence

cnn
—
The CIA now believes that it is more likely that the virus that causes Covid-19 originated in an accidental leak in a laboratory in China, rather than occurring naturally, according to a statement from the agency this Saturday, a few days after for director John Ratcliffe to take the reins.
For years, the agency has claimed it did not have enough information to determine which theory of origin was most likely, and its new assessment is just a “low confidence” judgment. He still considers a hypothesis of natural origin possible.
However, the decision to declassify and make public that assessment represents one of the first major moves by Ratcliffe, who has long favored the theory that the pandemic originated in research being carried out in China and he promised in an interview published in Breitbart on Thursday that he would make this issue a top priority.
“As you know, I have gone on record to say that I believe our intelligence, our science, and our common sense dictate that the origin of Covid was a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Ratcliffe told Breitbart. “But the CIA has not made that assessment or at least has not made it publicly. “So I’m going to focus on that and look at the intelligence and make sure the public knows that the agency is going to stop being on the sidelines.”
A US official noted that the new assessment predates the Trump administration. The agency’s director under former President Joe Biden, Bill Burns, had pressed analysts to take a position on the origins of the pandemic, and this assessment was made and published within the US government before for Donald Trump to take office on Monday, the official said.
It was not based on new intelligence collected by the U.S. government — officials have long said such intelligence is unlikely to surface so many years later — and was instead arrived at after a review of the existing information.
“The CIA continues to view both research-related and natural origin hypotheses of the COVID-19 pandemic as plausible,” a CIA spokesperson stated in a statement Saturday.
“We have low confidence in this ruling and will continue to evaluate any new available credible intelligence reports or open source information that could change the CIA’s assessment.”
All US intelligence agencies continue to unanimously maintain that Covid-19 was not developed as a biological weapon, but there remains no consensus on the origin of the virus, according to a report published by the Office of the Director of Intelligence in 2023.
And almost all US intelligence agencies also consider that the virus itself was not genetically created, according to the report.
However, the intelligence community has not been able to determine with certainty whether the pandemic originated in a laboratory leak or in nature, and remains divided on the matter.
Many scientists believe the virus appeared naturally in animals and spread to humans in an outbreak at a market in Wuhan, China. Proponents of the “lab leak theory,” for their part, believe that the virus was produced as a result of work in a Chinese laboratory, the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The theory, which has received much attention from Republican lawmakers, was embraced by Trump in his first term. The State Department under Trump launched an effort to prove that the virus originated in a Chinese laboratory, but it was suspended by the Biden administration.