Covid ‘most likely’ leaked from Chinese lab, says FBI director
Covid “most likely” leaked from a Chinese lab, the director of the FBI has said.
Christopher Wray’s comments are the first public confirmation by the bureau of its classified judgment on the origins of the pandemic, which has killed an estimated 6.85 million people.
“The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan,” Mr Wray told Fox News.
His interview followed reports that the US Department of Energy had also concluded that a lab leak was the most likely cause.
The study is considered authoritative because the department oversees a network of 17 laboratories encompassing research in advanced biology, but the energy department reached its conclusion with “low confidence”, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The comments are at odds with the CIA, which remains undecided between the lab leak and natural transmission theories.
Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, admitted there were split views held by the US intelligence community when asked about the Department of Energy’s report on CNN on Sunday.
“Some elements of the intelligence community have reached conclusions on one side, some on the other, and a number have said they just don’t have enough information to be sure,” he said.
He added that the Biden administration had “directed repeatedly every element of our intelligence community to put effort and resources on getting to the bottom of this question” and said: “Right now, there is not a definitive answer to emerge from the intelligence community.”
Some organisations back the theory – but with low levels of certainty – that the virus jumped naturally from animals to humans, and have focused on a wet food market in the city of Wuhan. That group includes the National Intelligence Council.
In 2021 a joint China-World Health Organisation (WHO) investigation called the lab leak hypothesis “extremely unlikely”. But the investigation faced heavy criticism, and the WHO has said that “all hypotheses remain open and require further study”.
In his interview, Mr Wray also accused the Chinese government of trying to stall US efforts to investigate the causes of the pandemic.
“The Chinese government… has been doing its best to try to thwart and obfuscate the work here, the work that we’re doing, the work that our US government and close foreign partners are doing, and that’s unfortunate for everybody,” he said. Chinese officials denied the claim, calling it a smear campaign against Beijing.
