(CNSNews.com) – A leak from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, “is the only explanation” for the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic that is supported by U.S. intelligence, science, and common sense, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe told lawmakers in Tuesday.
Ratcliffe expressed the belief that the day will come when all U.S. intelligence agencies will make the same assessment as some now have – that the virus originated from a lab leak in Wuhan.
Why they have not done so was a simple question without a simple answer, he told the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.
Ratcliffe, who served during the last eight months of the Trump administration, pointed to challenges encountered while he was in office, including legitimate concerns about compromising intelligence sources and methods, “as well as illegitimate roadblocks that related to professional conflicts of interest and partisan politics.”
“These included the headwinds created when a lab leak assessment was initially labeled falsely, and falsely reported with near unanimity as a ‘conspiracy theory,’ by conflicted science – scientists, and by mainstream press, while also being censored as ‘disinformation’ by social media giants.”
In support of his own assessment – “as a person with as much access as anyone to our government’s intelligence during the initial year of the pandemic” – that the outbreak originated from a lab leak, Ratcliffe offered an illustration of evidence before a court.
“From a view inside the I.C. [intelligence community], if our intelligence and evidence supporting a lab leak theory was placed side by side with our intelligence and evidence pointing to a natural origins or spillover theory, the lab leak side of the ledger would be long, convincing, even overwhelming – while the spillover side would be nearly empty and tenuous.”
“Were this a trial, a preponderance of circumstantial evidence provided by our intelligence would compel a jury finding of guilt to an accusation that coronavirus research in the Wuhan labs was responsible for the pandemic,” he said.
“And likewise, the Chinese Communist Party would be guilty of going to great lengths to cover up the virus’ origins – from destroying medical tests, samples and data, to intimidating and ‘disappearing’ witnesses and journalists, to lying and coercing global health authorities, even spreading propaganda that the virus originated here in the United States, by the U.S. military.”
Ratcliffe said the CCP’s efforts continue up the present, noting that the Chinese Embassy had objected to Tuesday’s hearing, and the subcommittee’s “efforts to ascertain the truth.”
Earlier Fox News reported that a Chinese Embassy official had emailed a staff member for subcommittee chairman Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), calling on the panel to “refrain from targeting China in holding the above-mentioned hearings, and put a stop to the intelligence-led, politics-driven origins-tracing.”
“What is China trying to hide about the origins of COVID-19?” the subcommittee tweeted in response to the embassy’s intervention, adding that the “intimidation tactics will not slow down our investigation.”
The reaction on Twitter from former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was blunter: “They’re interfering because they’re guilty.”
China has from the outset firmly denied the possibility that the coronavirus could have accidentally spilled from a lab in Wuhan, like the Wuhan Institute of Virology, China’s specialist lab studying coronaviruses in bats and carrying out “gain of function” research.
Beijing has described the lab leak hypothesis as “a false claim concocted by anti-China forces for political purposes.” It notes that a World Health Organization (WHO)-convened expert team that visited Wuhan in early 2021 concluded that a lab origin for the outbreak was “extremely unlikely.”
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus later overruled the team’s recommendation that the lab theory not be studied further, saying that “all hypotheses [on the origins] remain on the table.”
As alluded to by Ratcliffe in his testimony, China’s foreign ministry just weeks after the start of the crisis began promoting claims that the U.S. military was responsible for the outbreak. It continues to demand that the U.S. open biolabs to U.N. scrutiny, starting with the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick, Maryland.
On Monday, the office of Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) released a comprehensive report on the origins of the virus, which found that the outbreak may have begun with two separate, unintentional lab leaks in Wuhan in the fall of 2019.