By Aaron Miller-
FBI director Christopher Wray(pictured) has confirmed the agency’s belief that the coronavirus outbreak was ‘most likely’ the result of a leak from a lab in China.
The World Health Organization (WHO) was first informed of a number of coronavirus cases detected in Wuhan City, China in December 2019, before soon spreading like wildfire and forcing the world into lockdown.
It is the first public confirmation of the FBI’s classified judgement of how the pandemic virus emerged., although many scientists have rejected the lab leak theory as lacking in evidence
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 comments follow a Wall Street Journal report on Sunday that the US Energy Department has assessed with low confidence the pandemic resulted from an unintended lab leak in China.
Four other agencies, along with a national intelligence panel have maintained their conclusion that the pandemic was likely the result of natural transmission, and two are undecided.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby said on Monday the US government has not reached a definitive conclusion and consensus on the pandemic’s origins.
US President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, has previously said there were a “variety of views in the intelligence community” on the pandemic’s origins.
“A number of them have said they just don’t have enough information,” Mr Sullivan told CNN on Sunday.
China’s foreign ministry, commenting on the Wall Street Journal report, which was confirmed by other US media, referred to a World Health Organization (WHO)-China report that pointed toward a natural origin for the pandemic, rather than a lab leak.
“Certain parties should stop rehashing the ‘lab leak’ narrative, stop smearing China and stop politicising the origins-tracing issue,” spokesperson Mao Ning said.
Following the outbreak, the FBI sought to determine the specific origins of the outbreak by launching an assessment which director Wray commented publicly on for the first time this week
Wray told Fox News the FBI has struggled to work with the Chinese government in the investigation, saying: “I will just make the observation that the Chinese government, it seems to me, has been doing its best to try to thwart and obfuscate the work here, the work that our US government and close foreign partners are doing.
“And that’s unfortunate for everybody.”
Three years after the outbreak began, Wray said most details of the FBI’s investigation remain classified.
However, he claimed: “The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Wray explained how the FBI has a team of experts whose job it is to focus on the risk of biological threats that come into the ‘wrong hands’ including by a ‘hostile nation state’.
Referring to coronavirus, he continued: “You’re talking about a potential leak from a Chinese government-controlled lab that killed millions of Americans, and that’s precisely what that capability was designed for.”
The Chinese government has not responded directly to Wray’s comments, but on Monday (27 February) China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs criticised a report that the US Department of Energy’s had assessed with ‘ low confidence’ that the virus leaked from a lab.
A ‘low confidence’ assessment typically relates to cases where the information obtained is not reliable or substantial enough to make a more definitive judgment.
In response to the news of the Department of Energy’s updated assessment, spokesperson Mao Ning said the parties concerned ‘should stop stirring up arguments about laboratory leaks, stop smearing China and stop politicizing the issue of the virus origin’.
On Monday, White House national security spokesperson, John Kirby, told reporters the US government has not yet reached a definitive conclusion on the origins of the pandemic.
In 2021, the WHO released a report saying it is ‘extremely unlikely’ the virus came from a Wuhan lab, but it has completely not ruled out the possibility.