Post by Admin on Aug 5, 2021 22:51:04 GMT
Multiple sources told CNN that absent an unexpected windfall of new information, officials don't expect to uncover a "smoking gun" -- like intercepted communications, for example -- that would offer definitive proof for either theory. The Biden administration's 90-day push is predicated on the expectation that science, not intelligence will be the key.
Intelligence officials are tasked with addressing several "scientific knowledge gaps" about the virus' evolution, according to the collection guidance governing the 90-day push, distributed to more than a dozen agencies on June 11 by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and obtained by CNN.
The memo instructs the intelligence community to "expand its collection" and consider data already in its possession to identify both the initial host of the coronavirus and any species that it may have passed through as it adapted to humans -- or to find as "any progenitor virus and/or virus that could serve as backbone for genetic engineering purposes."
Digging into the science
The genetic code of a given virus is the signature that allows scientists to tell the difference between the Delta and Beta variants of the coronavirus, for example. It can also offer clues as to how the virus has adapted or mutated over time, including whether it shows signs of human manipulation -- a kind of genetic history.
Many scientists continue to believe that the most likely scenario is that the virus jumped from animals to humans naturally. But despite testing thousands of animals, researchers still haven't identified the intermediate host through which the virus passed as it adapted to humans.
But some researchers, intelligence officials and Republican lawmakers believe that researchers at the WIV might have genetically altered a virus in the lab, using a controversial kind of research known as "gain of function" that could have infected researchers who then spread it in their community.
It's also plausible that the initial infection took place naturally outside of the lab, perhaps while a scientist was collecting a sample from an animal in the wild, and that scientist then spread the virus unknowingly when he returned to the lab with the samples, multiple sources familiar with the intelligence explained.
"If it was the latter, it was likely brought into a lab to study because someone got sick ... which means there were an unknowable number of other people who were already sick," the source familiar with the probe said.
Understanding exactly which viruses researchers at the WIV were working on could provide important evidence for any one of these theories. It's one of the reasons that investigators on Capitol Hill and elsewhere have been keenly focused on the database that was taken offline in 2019.
But it might not prove anything definitively, sources familiar with the intelligence say. Even if scientists in the intelligence community are able to use the data from the lab to stitch together a complete genetic history that shows how the virus mutated, they might not have enough information about how it was handled by the Chinese lab to determine with a high level of confidence that it leaked.
"Despite having that complete history of variants, [officials might] lack the contextual information to make sense of it in a narrative way," the source familiar with the investigation explained.
"Even a complete sequence history is difficult to obtain. And doesn't really tell us anything about the origins of the pandemic itself without the context," this person added.
Some Republicans on Capitol Hill have jumped into the uncertainty with their own report claiming that "the preponderance of evidence suggests" the coronavirus was "accidentally" released from a lab in Wuhan in 2019 -- an assertion that goes far beyond the intelligence community's current view of the matter.
90 days -- and then what?
It's possible that at the end of Biden's 90-day push, the intelligence community won't have reached what's known as a "high-confidence" assessment as to the pandemic's origins. Administration officials have previously suggested to CNN that it's possible a second review could be ordered at the end of the 90 days.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence and Foreign Relations Committees earlier this week sent a letter urging the administration to continue to prioritize the hunt until such a judgment can be made in order to prevent future pandemics.
But the lawmakers also zeroed in on a related focus for intelligence officials probing the pandemic's origins: China's "efforts to conceal the severity and scope of the outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic."
"We also believe that the investigation should address PRC efforts to prevent international inquiries into the origins of SARS-CoV-2, and other actions PRC authorities have taken to obscure the nature of the virus and its transmission," the lawmakers said.
Republican lawmakers in the House, meanwhile, have latched onto the theory that the virus escaped from a lab. GOP lawmakers in a report released Monday by Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas have claimed that "the preponderance of evidence suggests" the coronavirus was "accidentally" released from a lab in Wuhan in 2019.
Intelligence officials say it's still far too soon to say.
Intelligence officials are tasked with addressing several "scientific knowledge gaps" about the virus' evolution, according to the collection guidance governing the 90-day push, distributed to more than a dozen agencies on June 11 by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and obtained by CNN.
The memo instructs the intelligence community to "expand its collection" and consider data already in its possession to identify both the initial host of the coronavirus and any species that it may have passed through as it adapted to humans -- or to find as "any progenitor virus and/or virus that could serve as backbone for genetic engineering purposes."
Digging into the science
The genetic code of a given virus is the signature that allows scientists to tell the difference between the Delta and Beta variants of the coronavirus, for example. It can also offer clues as to how the virus has adapted or mutated over time, including whether it shows signs of human manipulation -- a kind of genetic history.
Many scientists continue to believe that the most likely scenario is that the virus jumped from animals to humans naturally. But despite testing thousands of animals, researchers still haven't identified the intermediate host through which the virus passed as it adapted to humans.
But some researchers, intelligence officials and Republican lawmakers believe that researchers at the WIV might have genetically altered a virus in the lab, using a controversial kind of research known as "gain of function" that could have infected researchers who then spread it in their community.
It's also plausible that the initial infection took place naturally outside of the lab, perhaps while a scientist was collecting a sample from an animal in the wild, and that scientist then spread the virus unknowingly when he returned to the lab with the samples, multiple sources familiar with the intelligence explained.
"If it was the latter, it was likely brought into a lab to study because someone got sick ... which means there were an unknowable number of other people who were already sick," the source familiar with the probe said.
Understanding exactly which viruses researchers at the WIV were working on could provide important evidence for any one of these theories. It's one of the reasons that investigators on Capitol Hill and elsewhere have been keenly focused on the database that was taken offline in 2019.
But it might not prove anything definitively, sources familiar with the intelligence say. Even if scientists in the intelligence community are able to use the data from the lab to stitch together a complete genetic history that shows how the virus mutated, they might not have enough information about how it was handled by the Chinese lab to determine with a high level of confidence that it leaked.
"Despite having that complete history of variants, [officials might] lack the contextual information to make sense of it in a narrative way," the source familiar with the investigation explained.
"Even a complete sequence history is difficult to obtain. And doesn't really tell us anything about the origins of the pandemic itself without the context," this person added.
Some Republicans on Capitol Hill have jumped into the uncertainty with their own report claiming that "the preponderance of evidence suggests" the coronavirus was "accidentally" released from a lab in Wuhan in 2019 -- an assertion that goes far beyond the intelligence community's current view of the matter.
90 days -- and then what?
It's possible that at the end of Biden's 90-day push, the intelligence community won't have reached what's known as a "high-confidence" assessment as to the pandemic's origins. Administration officials have previously suggested to CNN that it's possible a second review could be ordered at the end of the 90 days.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence and Foreign Relations Committees earlier this week sent a letter urging the administration to continue to prioritize the hunt until such a judgment can be made in order to prevent future pandemics.
But the lawmakers also zeroed in on a related focus for intelligence officials probing the pandemic's origins: China's "efforts to conceal the severity and scope of the outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic."
"We also believe that the investigation should address PRC efforts to prevent international inquiries into the origins of SARS-CoV-2, and other actions PRC authorities have taken to obscure the nature of the virus and its transmission," the lawmakers said.
Republican lawmakers in the House, meanwhile, have latched onto the theory that the virus escaped from a lab. GOP lawmakers in a report released Monday by Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas have claimed that "the preponderance of evidence suggests" the coronavirus was "accidentally" released from a lab in Wuhan in 2019.
Intelligence officials say it's still far too soon to say.