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The CIA believes the most plausible source of the COVID-19 virus was a lab in Wuhan, China, according to a report released Saturday.
The CIA investigated the possible origins of the virus at the request of the Biden administration. However, the administration declined to make the CIA’s assessment public, according to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).
On his first day as the CIA director for the incoming Trump administration, John Ratcliffe ordered the report be declassified and released, according to The Associated Press.
Ratcliffe told Fox News on Sunday, “It was important for the American public to see an institution like the CIA get off the sidelines and be truthful about what our intelligence shows.”
RESTORING TRUST: Newly confirmed CIA Director John Ratcliffe is speaking out about the CIA’s decision to release a Biden-era assessment favoring the once widely dismissed COVID-19 lab-leak origin story. https://t.co/4eMeeO02Su pic.twitter.com/FoEgh8JM1Q
— Fox News (@FoxNews) January 27, 2025
Ratcliffe said the CIA “has assessed that the most likely cause of this pandemic that has wrought so much devastation around the world was because of a lab-related incident in Wuhan, so we’ll continue to investigate that moving forward.’’
While the totality of evidence points toward a lab leak, a CIA spokesperson told Fox News, “We have low confidence in this judgment and will continue to evaluate any available credible new intelligence reporting or open-source information that could change CIA’s assessment.”
Multiple government agencies say evidence supports lab-leak theory
The CIA is far from alone in asserting that COVID-19 most likely came from a lab.
In February 2023, a U.S. Department of Energy report concluded COVID-19 emerged as a result of a lab leak. Within a week, the FBI reached the same conclusion.
In April 2023, a U.S. Senate report also concluded that COVID-19 likely emerged from a Wuhan lab.
In December 2024, the U.S. House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic said in its final report that the COVID-19 pandemic “most likely” resulted from gain-of-function research conducted at a lab in Wuhan.
The congressional investigators listed five of the strongest arguments in favor of the lab leak theory:
- The virus possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature.
- Data show that all COVID-19 cases stem from a single introduction into humans. This runs contrary to previous pandemics where there were multiple spillover events.
- Wuhan is home to China’s foremost SARS research lab, which has a history of conducting gain-of-function research at inadequate biosafety levels.
- Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) researchers were sick with a COVID-like virus in the fall of 2019, months before COVID-19 was discovered at the wet market.
- By nearly all measures of science, if there were evidence of a natural origin it would have already surfaced.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky), who served on the subcommittee, praised Ratcliffe’s release of the CIA report in an X post.
Sunshine…On [the data] makes me happy — apologies to John Denver https://t.co/Phy9ZVFALd
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) January 25, 2025
The CIA declined to share its report with The Defender or comment by the deadline.
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Trump prepares executive order to halt gain-of-function research
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is drafting an executive order to halt federal funding, at least temporarily, for risky gain-of-function research, the WSJ reported.
The executive order’s details have yet to be finalized. However, people familiar with the plan told the WSJ the order’s goal would be to stop scientists with U.S. funding from conducting gain-of-function research on viruses that could endanger human health.
Gain-of-function research involves studying ways to make pathogens more dangerous or contagious.
The U.S. government was funding gain-of-function research on coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Trump’s nominee for leading the National Institutes of Health, has expressed support for pausing gain-of-function research.
Related articles in The Defender:
- WHO Top Scientist Was ‘Primary Collaborator’ of Peter Daszak — the Researcher Under HHS Scrutiny for Coronavirus Experiments in Wuhan
- FBI Had Evidence That COVID Leaked From a Lab — But Wasn’t Allowed to Present It
- Could Scientists at Center of COVID Lab-leak Controversy Face Criminal Charges?
- Taxpayers Paid $262 Million to U.S. Virologist Who Worked With Wuhan Lab — But Court Rules He Can Hide the Data
- Fauci Protected Key U.S. Collaborator With Wuhan Lab From Federal Scrutiny
